STRDGGII  BETWEEN 


.JKE/tND 


ARTHUR  M.LEWIS 


The  Struggle 

Between  Science  and 

Superstition 


By 
ARTHUR  M.  LEWIS 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 
1916 


JOHN    F.  HIGCINS 

PRINTER  AND  BINDER 

80 

376-382    MONROE  STREET 
CHICAGO.      ILLINOIS 


PREFACE 


This  little  book  is  the  seventh  volume  to 
make  its  appearance  as  the  result  of  the  lecture 
courses  delivered  at  the  Garrick  theater  during 
the  last  nine  years.  Its  theme  is  taken  from  the 
course  of  sixteen  lectures  on  the  same  subject 
delivered  in  the  season  of  1914-15.  I  trust  that 
this  modest  narrative  will  meet  with  as  gen- 
erous a  reception  as  its  half  dozen  predecessors. 
There  is  no  lack  of  evidence  that  in  this  coun- 
try in  the  coming  years  there  will  be  a  keen 
and  bitter  struggle  between  the  representatives 
of  superstition  and  the  champions  of  social 
progress.  This  little  book  is  intended  to  serve 
as  a  weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  latter. 

My  reason  for  writing  it  is,  that  most  of  the 
books  covering  this  field,  such  as  Draper's  "In-  p 
tellectual  Development  of  Europe"  and  / 
White's  "History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science 
with  Theology,"  are  expensive  and  therefore 
almost  inaccessible  to  the  general  public.  In 
overcoming  this  difficulty  and  furnishing  what 
I  hope  will  be  an  introduction  and  inducement 
to  the  study  of  the  larger  works,  I  hope  to  have 
aided  the  cause  which  they  so  valiantly  served. 
I  have  followed  as  far  as  possible  the  method 
3 


4  PREFACE 

of  the  story  teller,  hoping  thereby  to  have  ren- 
dered the  book  especially  interesting.  I  have 
constantly  kept  in  mind  the  idea  of  a  book 
which  one  might  give  to  another  with  the  ob- 
ject of  securing  a  new  convert  to  the  cause  of 
intellectual  liberty. 

I  wish  here  to  acknowledge  my  great  indebt- 
edness to  the  authors  named  above,  and  also  to 
Mclntyre's  biography  of  Bruno,  Professor 
Bury's  "History  of  Freedom  of  Thought,"  and 
especially  to  Karl  von  Gebler's  splendid  and 
scholarly  work,  "Galileo  and  the  Roman 
Curia. ' '  I  regret  the  lack  of  space  that  makes 
impossible  an  acknowledgement  to  many  other 
authors,  in  whose  works  I  have  delighted  while 
preparing  this  book.  My  thanks  are  also  due 
for  many  valuable  suggestions  to  my  good 
friend  Charles  H.  Kerr,  who  has  always  un- 
flinchingly held  that  there  is  no  hope  of  the 
emancipation  of  a  proletariat  the  mind  of 
which  is  cobwebbed  with  delusions.  Last,  and 
above  all,  I  give  cordial  thanks  to  the  Garrick 
jmdience,  whose  generous  appreciation  from 
year  to  year  has  made  this  and  the  preceding 
volumes  possible. 

ARTHUR  M.  LEWIS. 

Chicago,  October  2,  1915. 


TABLE  OP  CONTENTS 


Chapter  Page 

I  THE  ANTAGONISTS 7 

II  STRUGGLES  IN  GREECE 28 

III  SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA 40 

IV  CHRISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS 63 

V  THE  ALEXANDRIA  TRAGEDY 78 

VI  BRUNO,  THE  WANDERER 88 

VII  BRUNO,  THE  MARTYR 112 

VIII  GALILEO  TO  1616 128 

IX  TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE 147 

X  RECANTATION  AND  AFTER 172 

XI  THE  FUTURE 184 


The  Struggle  Between 
Science  and  Superstition 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  ANTAGONISTS 

BEFORE  we  consider  the  historic  struggle 
between  superstition  and  science  we 
shall  briefly  consider  the  natures  of  these 
age-long  adversaries.  The  introduction  of 
the  antagonists  will  follow,  not  the  order  of 
their  importance,  but  the  order  of  their  appear- 
ance— the  historical  order.  This  preliminary 
analysis  will  enable  the  reader  to  avoid  later 
misunderstandings  as  to  the  sense  in  which  these 
names  are  used.  Superstition  will  have  a  much 
wider  scope  than  is  given  it  in  common  usage. 
The  casting  of  articles  over  the  right  shoulder, 
the  abstention  from  meat  on  Fridays,  and  similar 
practices,  will  not  be  regarded  as  superstition, 
but  as  merely  the  buttons  of  its  uniform.  Super- 
stition will  mean  what  is  generally  meant  by 
the  word  religion,  and  from  this  point  the 
7 


8         SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

terms  will  be  interchangeable.  This  opens  a 
path  to  the  consideration  of  the  nature  of  re- 
ligion. 

There  have  been  many  attempts  to  establish 
a  dividing  line  in  the  animal  kingdom  between 
man  and  his  lower  relatives.  Such  is  the  unity 
of  the  universe  however,  that  all  attempts  at 
rigid  divisions  have  failed,  and  the  efforts  to 
separate  the  human  and  the  subhuman  have  met 
with  small  success.  True,  the  whole  structure  of 
science  follows  the  principles  of  division  and 
classification,  but  these  divisions  are  not  so  much 
realities  of  the  cosmos,  as  devices  to  overcome 
the  limitations  of  the  human  mind. 

The  attempt  to  isolate  man  as  the  "social  ani- 
mal" collapsed  with  the  discovery  of  the  com- 
plex societies  of  bees  and  ants,  and  Aristotle's 
definition  of  man  as  a  "political  animal"  per- 
ished with  it,  though  quite  unjustly,  as  status  in 
these  insect  societies  is  determined  by  conditions 
that  are  physiological  rather  than  political. 
Romanes'  great  book  on  animal  intelli- 
gence, and  a  great  mass  of  similar  research 
have  destroyed  the  idea  of  man  as  the  exclusively 
"thinking  animal."  The  definition  which  seems 
to  have  best  stood  the  test  of  further  investiga- 
tion is  the  one  which  describes  man  as  the  "reli- 
gious animal." 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  9 

It  is  practically  certain  that  among  the  crea- 
tures below  man  there  is  nothing  that  can  be 
properly  called  religion.  Many  animals  display 
fear,  but  while  fear  figures  largely  in  religious 
phenomena,  it  does  not  constitute  religion. 

"We  enter  a  region  of  great  uncertainty  when 
it  is  asserted  that  there  are,  or  have  been,  tribes 
or  races  of  men  entirely  without  religion.  This 
raises  the  large  and  greatly  controverted 
question  of  the  universality  of  religion.  The 
dogmatism  of  the  assertions  on  both  sides  of 
this  question  has  been  strangely  at  variance 
with  the  vagueness  of  the  evidence.  In  this  field 
it  has  proven  that  the  truth  is  not  easily  reached. 
Missionaries  living  among  savage  tribes  have 
helped  to  cloud  the  subject,  by  refusing  to  recog- 
nize us  religion,  anything  which  did  not  agree 
with  their  own  beliefs.  Says  Professor  Thomas : 
"For  the  most  part  the  religious  world  is  so 
occupied  in  hating  and  despising  the  beliefs 
of  the  heathen  whose  vast  regions  of  the 
globe  are  painted  black  on  missionary  maps, 
that  they  have  little  time  or  capacity  left  to  un- 
derstand them."  Many  not  specially  religious 
travelers  have  also  erred  through  inability  to 
see  religion  in  anything  short  of  the  compari- 
tively  highly  developed  theological  ideas  of  the 
western  world.  A  yet  further  source  of  error 


10      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

lies  in  failure  to  allow  for  the  now  well-known 
reluctance  of  the  savage  to  parade  his  religious 
beliefs  before  strangers. 

For  these  and  other  reasons,  Lang,  Moffat, 
Azara,  and  even  so  great  an  authority  as  Sir 
John  Lubbock,  have  been  deceived  into  asserting 
the  absence  of  religion  where  more  painstaking 
investigation  proved  it  to  be  present.  The 
present  trend  of  the  evidence  is,  undoubtedly,  in 
favor  of  the  universality  of  religion. 

This  tendency  has  been  enthusiastically  ac- 
cepted by  religious  apologists,  who  hastily  in- 
terpreted it  to  mean  the  exemption  of  religion 
from  the  process  of  evolution.  It  is  only  a  case 
of  vain  grasping  at  straws.  In  half  a  dozen  dif- 
ferent sciences,  the  natural  evolution  of  religion 
has  been  established  beyond  any  possible  refuta- 
tion. As  the  attitude  of  modern  ethnologists  is 
well  typified  in  Professor  William  I.  Thomas  in 
his  valuable  "Source  Book  for  Social  Origins," 
it  will  be  well  worth  the  reader's  while  to  ponder 
his  cautious  but  illuminating  summary  of  the 
case.  Having,  in  common  with  Lester  F.  Ward, 
adopted  the  idea  of  Tylor,  that  the  essential  thing 
in  religion  is  "belief  in  the  existence  of  spiritual 
beings,"  Thomas  proceeds: 

1 '  So  far  as  I  can  judge  from  the  immense  mass 
of  accessible  evidence,  we  have  to  admit  that 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  11 

the  belief  in  spiritual  beings  appears  among  all 
low  races  with  whom  we  have  attained  to  thor- 
oughly intimate  acquaintance:  whereas,  the  as- 
sertion of  absence  of  such  belief  must  apply 
either  to  ancient  tribes,  or  to  more  or  less  im- 
perfectly described  modern  ones.     The   exact 
bearing  of  this  state  of  things  on  the  problem 
of  the  origin  of  religion  may  be  thus  briefly 
stated:    Were  it  distinctly  proved  that  non-re- 
ligious savages  exist  or  have  existed,  these  might 
be  at  least  plausibly  claimed  as  representatives 
of  the  condition  of  Man  before  he  arrived  at  the 
religious  stage  of  culture.    It  is  not  desirable, 
however,  that  this  argument  should  be  put  for- 
ward, for  the  asserted  existence  of  the  non-re- 
ligious tribes  in  question  rests,  as  we  have  seen, 
on  evidence  often  mistaken  and  never  conclu- 
sive.   The  argument  for  the  natural  evolution  of 
religious  ideas  among  mankind  is  not  invalidated 
by  the  rejection  of  an  ally  too  weak  at  present 
to  give  effectual  help.    Non-religious  tribes  may 
not  exist  in  our  day,  but  the  fact  bears  no  more 
decisively  on  the  development  of  religion,  than 
the  impossibility  of  finding  a  modern  English  vil- 
lage without  scissors  or  books  or  lucifer-matches 
bears  on  the  fact  that  there  was  a  time  when  no 
such  things  existed  in  the  land. ' ' 


12       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

The  apologists  for  religion  have  even  contend- 
ed, with  small  success  where  free  discussion  was 
possible,  that  religion  has  been  an  unmixed  bless- 
ing to  the  human  race.  On  the  other  hand,  not  a 
few  of  the  clearest  thinkers  of  our  age  have  held 
religion  to  have  been,  throughout  its  career,  an 
unmitigated  curse.  Among  the  latter  may  be 
placed  America's  greatest  sociologist  Lester  F. 
Ward.  "Whatever"  says  Ward  "may  be  the 
benefits  which  supernatural  beliefs  have  con- 
ferred and  are  to  confer  upon  man  in  a  future 
state  of  existence,  they  have  not  only  conferred 
none  upon  him  in  the  present  state,  but  have 
demonstrably  impeded  his  upward  course 
throughout  his  entire  career." 

One  of  the  truths  which  modem  research  has 
thoroughly  established  is,  the  purely  human 
origin  of  all  the  religions.  The  flimsy  dogma  of 
a  divine  revelation  has  taken  sanctuary  in  the 
pulpit,  and  even  there  suffers  an  increasing  lack 
of  unanimity.  The  somber  gods,  who  were  sup- 
posed to  have  spoken  to  our  remote  ancestors, 
have  proved  to  be  nothing  more  than  the  an- 
thropomorphic shadows — the  idealized  self-pro- 
jections— of  the  men  who  were  their  makers. 
Their  barbarous  codes  were  the  disguised  decrees 
of  primitive  rulers  who  sought,  through  a  higher 
sanction,  to  rivet  their  mandates  the  more  firmly 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  13 

on  the  minds  of  men.  This  critical  development 
has  placed  science  and  religion  on  equal  ground 
in  at  least  one  respect — their  common  origin  as 
products  of  the  human  mind.  Religion  then, 
like  science,  must  be  prepared  to  sustain  the  in- 
tellectual test.  Even  now — and  the  future  is 
likely  to  grow  steadily  more  discouraging  for 
religion — a  balloting  of  those  possessing  an 
elementary  knowledge  of  the  two  sides  of  the 
question,  and  fear  of  social  consequences  of  a 
sincere  vote  being  eliminated,  would  create  con- 
sternation in  the  religious  world.  Indeed,  "Ward 
has  suggested  a  method  by  which  religion  might 
vote  away  its  validity,  without  requiring  an  ex- 
pression from  its  critics : 

"If  a  convention  of  all  the  religions  on  the 
globe  were  to  be  called,  each  sect  being  repre- 
sented by  one  delegate,  and  the  question  were 
to  be  voted  upon  in  the  case  of  each  religion 
separately.  Is  this  religion  true?  or,  Is  this  re- 
ligion beneficial  to  man?  the  result  would  in- 
evitably be  that  only  one  affirmative  vote  would 
be  cast  in  each  case,  and  that  would  be  the  vote 
of  the  delegate  of  the  particular  religion  upon 
which  the  vote  was  taken ;  and,  if  the  action  of 
this  convention  with  regard  to  the  feasibility 
of  preserving  or  abolishing  religions  could  be 
conclusive,  it  would  be  found  that  all  the  reli- 


14      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

gions  of  the  world  would  be  overwhelmingly 
voted  down  and  abolished,  and  this  by  the  action 
of  avowed  religionists  alone." 

Religion  and  science  being  progeny  of  a  com- 
mon parent,  the  struggle  between  them  has  the 
nature  of  a  civil  war.  The  conflict  is  about  as 
old  as  written  history;  it  has  never  been  sus- 
pended, and  it  still  retains  its  primitive  persist- 
ence. A  search  for  causes  however,  serves  great- 
ly to  discredit  the  modern  tendency  to  worship 
at  the  shrine  of  reason. 

Reason  has  undoubtedly  been  the  savior  of  the 
human  race.  The  contemplation  of  man  as  he 
existed  in  the  cave-period,  has  caused  more  than 
one  biologist  to  wonder  how,  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  he  managed  to  survive.  The  cave-man 
was  probably  physically  stronger  than  the  man 
of  today,  but  in  this  respect  he  hardly  compared 
with  the  animals  who  were  his  enemies  and  com- 
petitors. He  was  devoid  of  all  natural  weapons ; 
they  were  armed  with  horns,  tusks  and  claws, 
which  made  combat  unequal  He  also  lacked  the 
powers  of  flight  possessed  by  animals  naturally 
unarmed.  His  one  advantage  lay  in  his  com- 
paratively larger  brain,  which  enabled  him  to 
invent  artificial  weapons  superior  to  any  fur- 
nished by  nature  The  mistake  lies  in  the  easy 
assumption  that,  because  the  power  to  reason 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  15 

has  been  overwhelmingly  advantageous,  the  acts 
it  led  to  could  never  have  been  other  than  bene- 
ficial. The  rational  faculty  in  man,  while  it  has 
been  in  the  main,  and  in  the  long  run,  of  ines- 
timable service,  has  led  him  to  the  performance 
of  untold  disastrous  acts  such  as  no  lower  animal 
could  be  persuaded  to  imitate.  An  extreme  ex- 
ample is  suicide,  an  act  of  which  all  lower  ani- 
mals are  totally  incapable.  The  instinctive  acts 
of  animals  are  always  based  on  a  long  experience 
almost  invariably  acquired  at  tremendous  cost. 
Rational  man  partially  escaped  this  initial  cost 
by  reasoned  schemes  to  circumvent  the  baleful 
elements  of  his  environment,  but  in  so  doing  he 
often  made  mistakes— usually  because  of  wrong 
conclusions  based  on  false  premises — which  pro- 
voked calamities  which  could  never  fall  on  the 
instinct-guided  animals. 

Quite  naturally,  these  tragic  blunders  were  es- 
pecially frequent  in  pre-historic  times,  when  the 
rational  faculty  was  in  the  experimental  stage. 
Their  prolific  sourco  was  man's  inability  to  com- 
prehend the  universe,  due  to  the  unfortunate 
combination  of  a  very  simple  mental  faculty  and 
an  extremely  complex  cosmos.  Admitting  for 
the  moment  the  existence  of  the  hypothetical 
creator,  it  would  seem  as  though  he  created  the 
universe  with  a  special  view  to  the  confusion  of 


16      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

his  children.  When  we  consider  how  many  ap- 
parently insoluble  mysteries  the  universe  still 
holds  for  us,  notwithstanding  our  immense 
scientific  progress,  it  is  little  wonder  that  our  an- 
cestors rarely  reached  the  truth.  Indeed  they 
never  seem  to  have  done  so,  except  in  the  few 
instances  where  appearance  coincided  with  real- 
ity. For  example:  the  only  correct  idea  they 
had  about  the  sun  was  that  it  was  hot.  They 
thought  the  sun  and  moon  to  be  about  the  same 
size,  as  any  uninstructed  child  would,  and  for 
the  same  reason — they  seem  so.  How  could  they 
know  that  the  golden  orb  of  day  had  sixty  million 
times  the  bulk  of  the  silver  disk  which  lit  their 
nights?  They  seemed  the  same  short  distance 
away,  and  what  could  tell  them  that  a  measuring 
wand  that  would  reach  the  moon  would  have  to 
be  placed  on  end  four  hundred  times  before  it 
would  touch  the  sun? 

The  earth  presented  another  series  of  deceptive 
appearances.  If  they  required  an  image  of  sta- 
bility, they  found  it  in  the  solid  earth  beneath 
their  feet.  There  was  nothing  to  suggest  that 
it  was  spinning  like  a  top,  and  that  they  were 
carried  around  on  its  surface  at  the  rate  of 
seventeen  miles  a  minute — the  speed  of  a  rifle 
ball.  They  knew — if  their  eyes  were  to  be  trust- 
ed at  all — that  the  earth  was  the  center  of  a  cir- 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  17 

cuit  performed  by  the  sun.  How  should  they 
know  the  exact  opposite  was  the  truth,  and  that 
they  were  being  whirled  around  the  sun  at  a 
speed  of  nineteen  miles  a  second.  What  is  there 
to  indicate  to  the  modern  traveler,  journeying 
from  New  York  to  Liverpool,  across  a  surface  ap- 
parently as  level  as  a  billiard  table,  that  he  is, 
in  reality,  scaling  a  mountain  of  water  three 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  high?  It  was  not  any- 
thing suggesting  itself  to  the  senses,  but  a  de- 
duction from  the  known  motion  of  the  stars,  that 
led  astronomers  to  undertake  those  wonderful 
researches  which  resulted  in  the  discovery  that 
we  are  being  carried  by  the  sun,  along  with  the 
whole  solar  family,  toward  the  great  star  Vega 
at  the  rate  of  twelve  miles  a  second.  It  is  almost 
impossible,  as  anyone  who  has  tried  knows,  to 
make  an  ignorant  man  believe  or  understand, 
that  water  in  an  atmospheric  pressure  pump  is 
not  drawn  up  from  in  front,  but  driven  up  from 
behind,  and  this  because  the  reality  is  so  dif- 
ferent from  the  appearance. 

And  so  it  happened  that  man's  primitive  at- 
tempts to  understand  the  universe  invariably 
went  astray,  and  he  succeeded  only  in  collecting 
a  great  mass  of  misinformation.  These  errors 
were  rarely  harmless,  and  some  were  probably  so 
disastrous  as  to  lead  to  the  annihilation  of  tribes 


18      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

and  races  who  held  them.  What  increased  the 
destructive  power  of  these  ancient  mistakes 
almost  inconceivably,  was  that  they  constituted 
the  solemn  teachings  of  deified  ancestors,  and 
were  thus  made  sacred  by  the  halo  of  religion. 

Among  the  most  calamitous  of  man's  early 
blunders  was  the  idea  which  stood,  and  still 
stands,  at  the  center  of  all  religion ;  belief  in  the 
existence  of  spiritual  beings.  In  addition  to  hav- 
ing inspired  an  unremitting  opposition  to  the 
progress  of  science,  this  malefic  belief  has  direct- 
ly caused  deaths  which  it  would  be  no  exaggera- 
tion to  place  in  the  millions.  A  comparatively 
recent  example  of  what  was  once  the  regular 
order  of  things  was  referred  to  in  the  following 
telegram,  which  appeared  in  the  "New  York 
Tribune"  of  April  13,  1880: 

"London,  April  12th — The  seven  hundred 
men,  boys,  girls,  priests,  and  foreigners  sacri- 
ficed at  Mandalay  for  the  restoration  of  the 
king's  health,  were  buried  alive — not  burned  as 
previously  stated — under  the  towers  of  the  city 
walls.  The  deed  was  done  to  appease  the  evil 
spirits.'* 

The  "United  States  Economist,"  of  four  days 
later — April  17,  in  a  protesting  article,  had  the 
following  to  say:  "The  sacrifice  of  seven  hun- 
dred persons,  including  men,  boys,  women,  girls, 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  19 

priests,  and  foreigners,  at  Mandalay,  for  the 
restoration  of  king  Thebaw's  health,  is  an  out- 
rage and  a  blot  on  the  civilization  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Had  such  a  wholesale  massacre 
occurred  in  the  most  remote  and  inaccessible 
regions  of  Africa,  there  might  be  an  excuse 
alleged  for  non-interference  on  the  part  of  civi- 
lized governments,  but  no  such  reason  can  be 
given  in  this  instance.  Burmah  is  one  of  the 
important  kingdoms  of  the  far  East.  Mandalay, 
the  capital  and  residence  of  the  monster  king,  is 
an  accessible  sea-port,  in  which  reside  consuls 
representing  European  and  Asiatic  powers.  The 
intention  of  this  pagan  to  offer  such  a  horrible 
rite  to  appease  his  gods  was  known  to  the  con- 
suls, and  fear  and  consternation  had  seized  upon 
his  subjects  and  they  were  fleeing  for  their 
lives." 

An  outrage  indeed  in  the  twentieth  century, 
but  only  because  enlightened  men  no  longer  be- 
lieve in  evil  spirits  which  need  to  be  appeased, 
but  quite  proper  and  thoroughly  logical  for  peo- 
ple holding  that  belief.  Says  Tylor  ' '  Men  do  not 
stop  short  at  the  persuasion  that  death  releases 
the  soul  to  a  free  and  active  existence,  but  they 
quite  logically  proceed  to  assist  nature  by  slay- 
ing men  in  order  to  liberate  their  souls  for 
ghostly  uses."  Ximenez  says  of  the  Indians  of 


20      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Vera  Paz,  "When  a  lord  was  dying,  they  im- 
mediately killed  as  many  slaves  as  he  had,  that 
they  might  precede  him  and  prepare  the  house 
for  their  master."  Garcilasso  says  that  a  dead 
Ynca's  wives  "volunteered  to  be  killed,  and 
their  number  was  often  such  that  the  officers 
were  obliged  to  interfere,  saying  that  enough 
had  gone  at  present." 

The  science  of  anthropology  has  proven  that 
this  pernicious  belief  in  spirit  gods,  who  were 
neither  better  nor  worse  than  the  Jehovah  of  the 
Old  Testament,  had  its  roots  in  nothing  better 
than  the  inability  of  savages  to  understand  the 
nature  of  their  dreams  or  to  comprehend  the 
meaning  of  shadows,  echos,  or  the  reflections  of 
themselves  in  pools  of  water.  Yet  these  gropings 
after  truth  which  resulted  in  religion,  were 
really  the  science  of  those  early  days ;  they  were 
the  first  attempts  to  grasp  the  structure  of  the 
universe.  If  they  failed  it  was  not  because  they 
used  an  instrument  different  from  that  used  by 
modern  science.  The  weapon  with  which  they 
attacked  their  problems  was  the  mind,  but  for 
them  the  mind  was  in  an  untried,  undeveloped 
state.  They  failed  where  modern  science  suc- 
ceeded, as  a  child  is  baffled  by  riddles  which 
readily  resolve  for  a  grown  man.  The  difference 
in  achievement  betwen  the  primitive  thinkers, 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  21 

who  founded  religion,  and  the  modern  thinkers, 
who  established  science,  is  a  difference  in  the 
periods  in  which  they  worked.  It  is  a  matter  of 
chronology. 

Therefore,  when  we  are  asked  to  choose  be- 
tween science  and  religion,  it  is  not  a  choice  be- 
tween science  and  something  entirely  unrelated. 
It  is  a  choice  between  the  science  of  a  painted 
savage  and  the  science  of  a  Darwin. 

It  is  difficult  for  those  who  have  not  informed 
themselves  on  the  subject,  to  understand  why 
religion,  founded  upon,  and  consisting  chiefly  of 
prehistoric  illusions,  should  have  persisted  so 
many  centuries,  and  still  remains  a  great  social 
power.  The  most  important  reason  is  its  great 
age.  While  science  is  of  yesterday,  religion  is 
almost  as  old  as  the  human  race.  For  tens  of 
thousands  of  years,  unrecorded  in  history,  re- 
ligion held  the  field  unchallenged.  To  say  that 
during  this  period  it  was  "bred  in  the  bone"  is 
to  speak  figuratively.  There  is  no  organic  process 
by  which  beliefs  can  be  be  made  congenital.  The 
doctrine  of  "innate  ideas"  has  been  eliminated 
from  the  thinking  of  the  well-informed.  True, 
almost  the  same  result  has  been  produced  by  a 
process  known  in  sociology,  as  social  heredity. 
According  to  this  illuminating  theory,  ideas  are 
carried  from  one  generation  to  another  by  edu- 


22      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

cation,  as  physical  qualities  are  transmitted  by 
Weismann's  germ-plasm.  Every  infant's  mind 
begins  as  a  clean  page  upon  which  anything  may 
be  written.  To  this  day  the  first  impression 
made  is  religious;  usually  the  first  lesson  is  a 
prayer.  The  child  is  helpless;  where  the  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary  is  not  known,  the  mind 
must  accept  whatever  is  offered  to  it.  So  the 
child  is  made  to  begin  life,  not  only  as  its  par- 
ents, but  as  its  remote  ancestors  of  the  stone  age 
began.  For  it  the  long  centuries  of  gradual  en- 
lightment  count  for  nothing,  and  it  must  re-enact 
the  long  human  tragedy  in  its  own  brief  career. 
All  who  have  fought  their  way  out  of  the  dark- 
ness are  familiar  with  the  stages  of  the  struggle. 
We  begin  with  our  minds  choked  with  lies 
rarely  believed  by  those  who  teach  them.  As  we 
approach  our  youth,  if  it  be  our  good  fortune  to 
have  preserved  our  intellectual  curiosity,  and 
read  books  not  recommended  by  conventional 
teachers,  we  begin  to  discover  the  fraud  which 
has  been  practised  upon  us.  The  best  of  our 
years  are  given  to  unlearning  superstitions  we 
should  never  have  been  taught,  and  after  we 
have  passed  the  zenith,  and  are  approaching  the 
western  horizon,  we  begin  to  acquire  the  knowl- 
edge which  should  have  been  given  to  us  freely 
in  our  receptive  childhood  as  we  sat  in  school. 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  23 

By  the  time  we  have  learned  to  really  live,  we  are 
about  ready  to  fall  face  foremost  into  the  grave. 
Yet  the  stupid,  tragic  waste  of  life  continues  un- 
abated. Every  new  generation  of  children  be- 
gins where  every  other  generation  began,  and  it 
never  occurs  to  us  that  it  might  be  better  for 
our  children  to  begin,  not  where  we  began,  but 
where  we  leave  off.  Of  course  there  is  a  reason 
for  this  perpetual  mummery,  and  the  reason  is 
not  far  to  seek.  Of  all  the  instruments  which 
have  effectually  served  the  ruling  class,  in  the 
oppression  of  the  exploited  mass,  none  have  com- 
pared with  religion.  This  alone  has  saved  re- 
ligion from  annihilation  at  the  hands  of  science. 
At  last  the  oppressed  of  the  world  are  beginning 
to  understand,  what  the  more  enlightened  among 
them  have  long  known,  that  whoever  an- 
nounces himself  a  friend  of  social  emancipation, 
and  is  at  the  same  time  a  defender  of  some  re- 
ligious cult,  may  be  counted  as  a  cipher  in  the 
struggle  for  freedom. 

The  most  important  difference  between  re- 
ligion and  science  is,  that  while  the  primitive 
gropings  of  prehistoric  men  became  fixed  to  the 
point  of  petrifaction  as  religion,  science  vigilant- 
ly maintains  its  fluid  state.  This  is  the  difference 
which  is  responsible  for  their  historic  conflict, 
and  so  long  as  this  difference  exists  there  can 


24      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

never  be  any  suspension  of  hostilities.  As 
neither  side  can  make  concessions  without  ceas- 
ing to  exist,  the  annihilation  of  one  of  the  com- 
batants is  the  only  alternative  to  a  perpetual 
warfare.  For  many  centuries  the  struggle  was 
unequal,  and  it  seemed  as  if  science  were  des- 
tined to  be  strangled  in  its  infancy.  With  the 
revival  of  Greek  learning  at  the  Renaissance,  the 
tide  of  battle  turned,  since  when  science  has 
never  suffered  a  defeat,  and  religion  has  never 
won  a  victory. 

There  has  been  no  lack  of  well-meaning,  but 
cloudy-minded  people,  seeking  to  achieve  a  rec- 
onciliation, but  the  fixity  of  religion,  and  the 
mobility  of  science,  have  made  amalgamation  im- 
possible. Science  has  many  settled  opinions,  but 
they  are  settled  only  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  evidence  in  their  favor.  No  scientific  gen- 
eralization is  regarded  as  beyond  challenge.  All 
that  is  necessary  to  the  overthrow,  and  conse- 
quent relinquishment,  of  the  most  widely  ac- 
cepted scientific  theory  is  the  production  of  evi- 
dence sufficient  to  disprove  it.  Thousands  of 
times,  in  every  field,  science  has  found  it  neces- 
sary to  modify,  and  often  to  completely  recast 
its  position.  If  during  some  of  these  transitions 
there  have  been  controversies  conducted  with 
unnecessary  heat,  it  has  usually  been  because 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  25 

some  gentleman  has  imported  theological  habits 
of  mind  into  an  intellectual  atmosphere  where 
they  are  alien  and  undesirable.  Science  has 
never  demanded  unwilling  acquiesence  in  any 
of  her  doctrines,  and  while  countless  thousands 
have  sneered  at  her  conclusions,  none  have  been 
burned  at  the  stake  or  broken  on  the  wheel. 

Science,  as  represented  by  her  illustrious  sons, 
has  always  held  that  truth  needed  no  adventi- 
tious aids,  believing  with  the  wise  Gamaliel,  that 
an  idea,  if  true,  would  successfully  withstand  all 
opposition,  while  if  false,  in  the  end  nothing 
could  save  it.  While  this  is  a  rather  optimistic 
view  of  the  constitution  of  the  universe,  it  has 
given  science  a  stainless  record  which  is  a  strik- 
ing contrast  to  the  bloody  career  of  religion.  As 
our  brief  narrative  will  show,  when  men  were 
slain  for  opinions  sake,  the  opinion  of  the  slayer 
was  always  some  hoary  delusion.  No  modern 
writer  has  stated  the  case  more  eloquently  than 
Robert  Blatchford.  The  following  vivid  indict- 
ment is  from  the  closing  pages  of  ''Not  Guilty." 

"We  cannot  look  back  over  that  trampled  and 
sanguinary  field  of  history  without  a  shudder; 
but  we  must  look.  It  reaches  back  into  the  im- 
penetrable mists  of  time,  it  reaches  forward  to 
our  own  thresholds,  which  still  are  wet  with 
blood  and  tears,  and  on  every  rood  of  it,  in 


26      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

ghastly  horror,  are  heaped  the  corpses  of  the 
men,  and  women,  and  children  slain  by  the  right- 
eous, in  the  name  of  God.  Though  the  gods 
perished,  though  the  vane  of  justice  veered  until 
right  became  wrong,  and  wrong  right,  yet  the 
crimes  continued,  the  horrible  mistakes  were  re- 
peated; the  holy,  and  the  noble,  and  cultivated 
still  cried  for  their  brother's  blood,  still 
trampled  the  infants  under  their  holy  feet,  still 
forced  the  maidens  and  the  mothers  to  slavery 
and  shame. 

"Men  and  women,  is  it  not  true? 

"From  fear  of  ghosts  and  devils,  and  for  the 
glory  of  the  gods  of  India,  of  Babylon,  of  Egypt, 
of  Greece,  of  Rome,  of  France,  of  Spain,  of 
England,  were  not  millions  tortured,  and  burnt, 
and  whipped,  and  hanged,  and  crucified? 

"Witchcraft,  and  heresy,  idolatry,  sacrifice 
propitiation,  divine  vengeance;  what  seas  of 
blood,  what  holocausts  of  crime,  what  long- 
drawn  tragedies  of  agony  and  bloody  sweat  do 
these  names  not  recall  ?  And  they  were  all  mis- 
takes !  They  were  all  nightmares,  born  of  ignor- 
ance and  superstition !  We  have  awakened  from 
those  nightmares.  Our  gods  no  longer  lust  after 
human  blood.  We  know  that  heresy  is  merely 
difference  of  education,  that  there  never  was 
a  witch;  we  know  that  all  those  millions  wept 


THE  ANTAGONISTS  27 

and  bled  and  died  for  nothing;  that  they  were 
tortured,  enslaved,  degraded  and  murdered,  by 
the  holy,  through  ignorance,  and  fear,  and  super- 
stition." 


CHAPTER  H 

STRUGGLES  IN  GREECE 

GREECE  had  the  good  fortune  to  escape 
the  curse  of  a  sacred  book.  This  is  why 
all  European  science  traces  its  begin- 
ning to  the  Greeks.  Like  all  other  peoples  they 
had  their  superstitious  period,  and  during  that 
period  their  myths  were  little  better  or  worse 
than  those  of  the  North  American  Indian.  Greek 
mythology  is  linked  with  the  name  of  Homer,  as 
the  Hebrew  mythology,  preserved  in  the  Old 
Testament,  gathers  about  the  name  of  Moses. 
All  students  of  primitive  thought  are  impressed 
by  the  striking  similarity  of  the  beliefs  of  wide- 
ly separated  races.  This  however,  has  found 
a  comparatively  simple  explanation;  they  were 
all  confronted  with  the  same  natural  phe- 
nomena, and  the  laws  of  thought  were  the  same 
for  all.  The  Christian  who  imagines  that  the 
marvels  of  Christian  theology  were  peculiar  to 
the  Hebrews,  displays  a  simplicity  bordering  on 
the  pathetic. 

In  the  Homeric  age  the  blue  sky  was  the  floor 
of  heaven.  There  Zeus  held  his  court,  surround- 
ed by  a  goodly  company  of  Gods,  who  with  their 
wives  and  mistresses,  indulged  some  very  human 
passions,  not  a  few  of  their  acts  belonging  to  the 
28 


STRUGGLES  IN  GEEECE  29 

category  of  crime.  The  sons  of  Gods  by  human 
mothers  were  quite  common.  Says  Draper: 
"Immaculate  conceptions  and  celestial  descents 
were  so  currently  received  in  those  days,  that 
whoever  had  greatly  distinguished  himself  in  the 
affairs  of  men  was  thought  to  be  of  supernatural 
lineage."  Divine  progenitors  by  immaculate 
conception  were  not  limited  to  the  Jews  and 
Greeks.  Eomulus,  the  mythical  founder  of 
Rome,  resulted  from  a  chance  meeting  of  the 
God  Mars  with  Rhea  Sylvia,  as  she  went  with 
her  pitcher  for  water  to  the  spring.  The  Egypt- 
ians who  adopted  the  platonic  philosophy,  sin- 
cerely and  devoutly  believed  that  Plato 's  mother 
Perictione,  owed  her  illustrious  son  to  the  influ- 
ences of  the  God  Apollo.  At  a  much  later  period, 
the  conquering  Alexander  signed  his  orders  and 
decrees  "King  Alexander,  the  son  of  Jupiter 
Ammon. ' '  His  mother,  Olympias,  who  of  course 
knew  the  facts,  often  jestingly  said  she  "wished 
Alexander  would  cease  from  incessantly  embroil- 
ing her  with  Jupiter's  wife."  In  Alexander's 
age  the  educated  Greeks  had  ceased  to  believe 
in  supernatural  pedigrees,  and  his  proclamations 
were  made  for  the  effect  that  they  had  on  the 
common  soldiers.  Arrian,  who  wrote  the  his- 
tory of  the  Macedonian  expedition,  says:  "I  can- 
not condemn  him  for  endeavoring  to  draw  his 


30      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

subjects  into  the  belief  of  his  divine  origin,  nor 
can  I  be  induced  to  think  it  any  great  crime,  for 
it  is  very  reasonable  to  imagine  that  he  intended 
no  more  by  it  than  merely  to  procure  the  greater 
authority  among  his  soldiers. ' '  Greek  mythology 
had  miracles  and  marvels  of  many  types,  but 
fortunately  they  were  not  recorded  in  a  sacred 
book  to  be  perpetuated  by  a  priesthood,  and 
serve  as  fetters  for  the  Greek  mind.  Says  Hux- 
ley: "The  dead  hand  of  a  book  sets  and  stiffens, 
amidst  texts  and  formulae,  until  it  becomes  a 
mere  petrifaction,  fit  only  for  that  function  of 
stumbling  block,  which  it  so  admirably  per- 
forms." 

It  must  not  be  assumed  that  religion  was  com- 
pletely disregarded  by  the  later  Greeks.  This 
was  true  of  the  educated  classes  only.  It  was 
part  of  the  sagacity  of  Greek  statesmen,  that 
they  clearly  perceived  the  value  of  religion  as  a 
means  of  perpetuating  the  subject  condition  of 
the  lower  classes.  Long  after  religion  had  been 
discarded  by  Greek  orators,  philosophers,  and 
legislators,  it  was  loudly  applauded  in  public. 
In  the  conversations  of  the  educated  it  was  unan- 
imously held  that,  while  religion  had  no  func- 
tions for  them,  it  was,  and  always  would  be,  in- 
dispensable for  the  common  people.  This  is  so 
generally  the  attitude  of  our  own  time,  that  we 


STRUGGLES  IN  GREECE  31 

are  surprised  to  find  it  in  vogue  at  so  remote  a 
date,  as  it  had  been  for  centuries  in  Egypt. 
Education  was  very  highly  valued  in  Greece,  but 
even  among  the  sophists,  who  were  the  educa- 
tionalists of  Greece,  there  was  no  idea  of 
spreading  knowledge  among  the  masses. 

There  were  many  reasons  for  the  decay  of  the 
Greek  national  faith,  though  all  may  be  massed 
under  the  general  title — the  growth  of  knowl- 
edge. A  conspicuous  factor  was  travel.  Fixity  of 
opinion  is  a  notorious  characteristic  of  all  people 
rooted  to  one  spot.  In  any  intellectual  advance, 
peasants  are  always  the  last  to  move.  People 
living  always  in  one  place  never  come  in  contact 
with  conflicting  ideas,  and  eventually  come  to 
believe  their  own  are  invulnerable.  Travel  in 
other  countries  effectively  destroys  the  illusion, 
and  convinces  the  traveler  that  opinions  and 
creeds  are  matters  of  geography.  The  pious 
Herodotus  found  that  at  the  very  time  Greek 
social  life  was  supposed  to  teem  with  the  super- 
natural, human  affairs  were  following  their  ordi- 
nary course  along  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  and 
Eratosthenes  discovered  the  legends  of  Odysseus 
were  contradicted  by  the  facts  of  geography. 

Thoughtful  Greeks  began  to  ask  why  the 
miracles  of  the  Iliad  had  so  completely  ceased, 
and  why  the  gods,  once  so  often  seen,  had  so 


32       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

utterly  disappeared?  They  refused  to  accept 
different  standards  for  different  times,  and  gen- 
eral scepticism  was  the  result.  The  Ionian  Gods 
of  Homer,  and  the  Doric  Gods  of  Hesiod,  lost 
their  hold  on  the  educated  Greek  mind. 

Greek  scholars  were  destined  to  pay  the  pen- 
alty for  their  failure  to  educate  the  general  pub- 
lic. To  escape  the  wrath  of  the  ignorant,  they 
were  obliged  to  pretend  to  believe  things  they 
found  no  longer  credible.  When  they  raised  the 
veil  of  hypocrisy,  they  invariably  suffered.  The 
father  of  Greek  tragedy,  Aeschylus,  allowed  his 
heretical  opinions  to  appear  in  his  plays ;  he  was 
condemned  to  be  stoned  to  death  for  blasphemy, 
and  was  saved  only  by  his  brother  Aminias  rais- 
ing the  arm  which  had  been  mutilated  in  the 
battle  of  Salamis.  Euripides,  another  dramatist, 
sought  to  escape  the  consequences  of  his  own 
unbelief  by  the  ignoble  expedient  of  denouncing 
the  heresies  of  his  fellow-scholars. 

The  difficulties  of  the  philosophers  were  even 
more  serious  than  those  of  the  poets,  probably 
because  their  attacks  were  more  fundamental 
and  were  therefore  more  dangerous  to  the  faith. 
Forever  famous  among  these  was  the  courageous 
Anaxagoras.  He  was  drawn  from  Asia  Minor 
to  Athens  as  ambitious  provincial  intellects  are 
ever  attracted  to  the  national  metropolis.  He 


STRUGGLES  IN  GEEECE  33 

lived  in  Athens  thirty  years,  became  famous  for 
the  severity  of  his  mode  of  life,  and  earned  the 
lasting  admiration  and  friendship  of  the  might- 
iest of  all  Greek  statesmen — Pericles.  He  was 
a  pre-eminent  astronomer  and  mathematician, 
and  he  sought,  with  amazing  diligence  and  in- 
sight, for  natural  explanations  of  celestial 
phenomena.  His  search  finally  caused  him  to 
fall  foul  of  the  worshippers  of  the  sun-god 
Apollo.  Says  Professor  William  Wallace  of  Ox- 
ford: "He  removed  the  halo  of  deity  from  the 
sun,  and  profanely  turned  Apollo  into  a  mass  of 
blazing  metal,  larger  than  Peloponnesus."  The 
Peninsula  of  the  Peloponnesus  had  an  average 
diameter  of  about  a  hundred  miles,  and  to  assert 
that  the  small  disk  in  the  sky  had  any  such  enor- 
mous proportions  was  ridiculous,  as  well  as  blas- 
phemous. It  required  all  the  eloquence  and 
power  of  Pericles  to  save  Anaxagoras  from  the 
clutches  of  his  prosecutors,  who  had  arrested  him 
on  the  charge  of  contravening  the  established 
dogmas  of  religion.  Even  then  he  was  heavily 
fined  and  obliged  to  flee  from  Athens.  He  went 
to  Lampsacus,  where  he  was  received  with  honor, 
and  where  he  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life. 

Another  victim  of  popular  ignorance  and  re- 
ligious bigotry  was  Protagoras,  the  first  of  the 
Sophists.  He  was  very  successful  teaching  and 


34       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

lecturing  in  the  principal  cities.  His  criticism 
was  that  religious  believers  claimed  to  know 
things  that  were  beyond  the  reach  of  the  human 
mind.  He  published  a  book  entitled  "On  the 
Gods,"  which  opened  as  follows:  "Concerning 
the  gods,  I  cannot  say  that  they  exist  nor  yet 
that  they  do  not  exist.  There  are  more  reasons 
than  one  why  we  cannot  know.  There  is  the 
obscurity  of  the  subject  and  there  is  the  brevity 
of  human  life."  For  these  sage  observations  he 
was  charged  with  blasphemy.  He  fled  from 
Athens,  and  on  his  way  to  Sicily,  was  lost  at  sea. 
Copies  of  his  book  were  collected  and  burned, 
though  the  book  for  which  Anaxagoras  had  been 
fined  was  still  displayed  for  sale  on  the  Athenian 
book-stalls. 

The  most  celebrated  case  of  Athenian  persecu- 
tion is,  of  course,  the  martyrdom  of  Socrates, 
and  it  would  be  pleasant  to  be  able  to  record  him 
as  a  martyr  for  science's  sake.  Unfortunately 
that  is  impossible,  as  Socrates  was  far  from  being 
a  champion  of  science.  He  regarded  mathemat- 
ical studies  and  physical  research  as  useless  and 
misleading.  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a 
more  unfortunate  attitude,  as  these  studies  were 
the  very  sources  of  scientific  development,  and 
it  was  the  successful  prosecution  of  them 
which  later  made  Alexandria  the  city  of  un- 


STRUGGLES  IN  GREECE  35 

rivalled  learning,  and  the  real  progenitor  of 
modern  science.  Thus  Socrates  rejected  that 
interrogation  of  the  outward,  objective  universe, 
which  has  proven  to  be  the  real  avenue  to  truth, 
and  he  set  up  in  its  place  that  perennial  pitfall 
of  the  classic  philosophers,  "The  introspective 
analysis  of  the  contents  of  consciousness."  His 
resultant  ethical  philosophy  was  almost  worth- 
less, and  consisted  chiefly  in  juggling  with  words 
and  definitions.  He  added  almost  nothing  to  the 
rich  store  of  Greek  knowledge,  and  about  the 
only  elements  in  his  teaching  of  real  value  were 
his  insistence  that  unfounded  assumptions  should 
not  be  accepted  as  established  knowledge,  and 
that  acceptance  by  a  majority  could  not  be  ad- 
mitted as  a  warrant  of  truth. 

It  must  not  be  inferred  from  the  unfortunate 
experiences  of  Anaxagoras,  and  Socrates,  that 
Greece  had  any  organized  repression  of  freedom 
of  opinion  that  could,  in  any  way,  be  compared 
with  the  Inquisition  of  the  Roman  Church  in  the 
middle  ages.  There  was  nothing  at  all  approach- 
ing the  wholesale  murder  of  that  sinister  insti- 
tution. Among  the  educated  classes  of  Greece 
unbelievers  were  the  rule  rather  than  the  excep- 
tion, yet  there  are  only  a  few  isolated  cases  of 
persecution  for  opinions  sake,  and  even  in  these 
instances  the  differing  views  were  almost  cer- 


36      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

tainly  not  the  real  causes  of  the  accusation.    A 
searching    inquiry    clearly    demonstrates    that 
Socrates  was  brought  to  trial  by  the  enemies  he 
made  in  his  career  as  an  Athenian  politician. 
He  had  shown  sturdy  opposition  on  various  oc- 
casions to  the  schemes  of  powerful  political  lead- 
ers, and  they  awaited  the  opportunity  for  re- 
venge.  The  political  parties  of  Athens  were 
chiefly  two,  which  represented  respectively  the 
aristocrats  and  the  democrats.  Socrates  belonged 
to  a  middle  party,  the  Moderates,  who  sought  to 
pit  the  middle  against  both  ends.  The  Moderates 
were  really  a  wing   of  the   Aristocrats,   and 
Socrates  was  an  aristocrat  in  all  his  inclinations 
and  the  sworn  foe  of  Athenian  democracy.    In 
politics,  as  in  philosophy,  he  was  a  reactionary. 
His  party  followed  the  now  familiar  policy  of 
keeping  the  masses  ignorant,  and  denying  them 
the   franchise   for   their   lack   of   intelligence. 
Socrates  had  long  held  his  obnoxious  opinions, 
but  it  was  not  until  he  was  seventy  years  old 
that  they  were  challenged,  and  had  the  demo- 
cratic party  not  come  into  power  at  that  time, 
he  would  almost  certainly  have  remained  undis- 
turbed.   With  their  advent  to  power,  the  demo- 
crats unwisely  decided  to  reach  their  opponents 
through   Socrates,   and  teach  them   a  lasting 


STRUGGLES  IN  GEEECE  37 

lesson,  and  two  of  Socrates'  three  accusers  were 
its  leading  politicians. 

Socrates  was  charged  with  (1)  denying  the 
gods  recognized  by  the  state,  and  (2)  introduc- 
ing instead  of  them  strange  divinities,  and  (3) 
corrupting  the  young.  Xenophon,  his  faithful 
disciple,  relates  that  specific  instances  were  given 
in  support  of  the  last  charge.  Among  these 
were:  teaching  his  associates  to  despise  the  in- 
stitutions of  the  state;  teaching  the  young  to 
disobey  their  parents  and  guardians  and  to  pre- 
fer his  own  authority  to  theirs;  quoting  mis- 
chievious  passages  from  Homer  and  Hesiod  to 
the  prejudice  of  morality  and  democracy.  It  is 
almost  certain  that,  had  he  adopted  a  pose  of 
at  least  respectful  deference,  there  being  no  dis- 
position to  extreme  severity,  he  would  have  been 
found  not  guilty  by  his  large  body  of  judges. 
To  the  great  distress  of  his  friends,  he  adopted 
an  attitude  of  open  defiance.  Even  then,  of  the 
large  jury  of  501  Athenians,  selected  to  try  his 
case,  220  are  said  to  have  voted  for  his  acquittal. 
A  further  dispay  of  contempt  for  consequences 
brought  the  death  sentence  by  an  increased  ma- 
jority. The  charges  were  unjust,  the  penalty 
was  extreme,  and  the  whole  affair  was  an  ugly 
blot  on  the  reputation  of  Athens.  As  a  warning 
to  his  friends  not  to  meddle  with  politics,  it  was 


38      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

a  complete  success.  His  chief  disciples,  includ- 
ing Plato,  left  Athens  until  the  storm  blew  over, 
and  when  they  returned,  Plato  made  it  clear  that 
he  had  retired  permanently  from  political  life. 

Less  celebrated,  but  contributing  more  bril- 
liantly to  the  growth  of  knowledge,  was 
Xenophanes.  As  I  have  already  briefly  re- 
counted this  in  "Evolution  Social  and  Organic" 
I  may  be  permitted  to  quote  the  following  para- 
graph from  its  opening  chapter: 

Xenophanes,  of  Colophon,  had  ventilated  ideas 
obnoxious  to  the  priests.  He  had  done  for  his 
age  what  Feuerbach  did  to  the  Nineteenth 
century — he  had  explained  the  origin  of  the  gods 
by  anthropomorphism.  Said  he:  "If  oxen  or 
lions  had  hands,  and  could  paint  with  their 
hands  and  produce  works  of  art  as  men  do, 
horses  would  paint  the  forms  of  the  gods  like 
horses  and  oxen  like  oxen.  Each  would  repre- 
sent them  with  bodies  according  to  the  form  of 
each.  So  the  Ethiopians  make  their  gods  black 
and  snubnosed;  the  Thracians  give  theirs  red 
hair  and  blue  eyes."  Had  Xenophanes  lived  at 
Athens,  where  a  religious  revival  had  just  taken 
place,  he  would  have  shared  the  fate  which  later 
overtook  the  impious  Socrates.  Luckily  for 
Xenophanes,  in  the  colony  where  he  lived  "the 
gods  were  left  to  take  care  of  themselves." 


STRUGGLES  IN  GREECE  39 

That  Xenophanes  could  travel  from  city  to 
city  expounding  Ms  theories,  and  denouncing 
Homer  for  relating  stories  of  the  gods  which 
would  have  disgraced  men,  is  evidence  of  the 
general  freedom  of  opinion  which,  with  some 
exceptions,  prevailed  in  Greece.  But  while 
tolerance  was  generally  practiced  by  the  Greeks, 
they  did  not  realize  its  tremendous  social  value, 
and  they  did  nothing  to  make  it  permanent.  It 
was  left  for  them  to  learn  by  bitter  experience, 
at  the  hands  of  the  Christians,  in  their  wonderful 
city  Alexandria,  what  a  fearful  curse  is  the  com- 
plete abrogation  of  the  freedom  of  thought. 


CHAPTER  III 

SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA 

THE  Satraps  of  the  Persian  empire  ob- 
served that  their  hired  Greek  soldiers 
were  far  superior  to  the  native  troops. 
The  Greek  soldiers  themselves  were  not  blind 
to  their  own  great  prowess,  and  the  stories  they 
told  on  their  visits  home  gradually  created  an 
impression  that  a  Greek  conquest  of  Persia, 
hitherto  almost  unthinkable,  might  be  within  the 
range  of  possibility.  This  notion  came  to  ma- 
turity in  the  brain  of  Philip,  the  king  of  Mace- 
donia. As  a  result  of  the  schemes  and  labors  of 
twenty  years,  Philip  had  not  only  secured  the 
recognition  of  Macedonia  as  a  Greek  province, 
but  had  made  the  rest  of  Greece  subservient  to 
it.  Demosthenes  had  tried  to  check  his  progress 
by  eloquent  appeals  to  the  Athenians,  but  his 
warnings  had  fallen  on  indifferent  ears.  Philip 
had  triumphed  because  of  his  superior  military 
organization;  the  Macedonian  phalanx  proved 
unconquerable  until  confronted  by  the  Roman 
legion.  Now  he  planned  to  clinch  his  supremacy 
by  an  enterprise  which  would  arouse  the  en- 
thusiasm of  all  Greeks.  He  announced  his  inten- 
tion of  avenging  the  old  invasions  of  Greece  by 
Xerxes  and  Darius,  by  leading  the  united  Greek 
40 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          41 

armies  to  the  conquest  of  Persia.  Whether  the 
military  genius  of  Philip  would  have  proved 
equal  to  the  task  can  never  be  known ;  while  he 
was  still  shaping  his  plans  he  was  assassinated 
by  one  of  his  own  subjects  in  the  year  336  B.  C., 
sixty-three  years  after  the  death  of  Socrates. 

Greek  hopes  for  the  conquest  of  Persia  did  not 
die  with  Philip ;  indeed  it  is  quite  probable  that 
his  demise  was  the  best  thing  that  could  have 
happened  for  the  success  of  his  plans,  for  he  was 
succeeded  by  a  boy  of  twenty  who,  in  five  years 
from  his  father's  death,  had  established  a  repu- 
tation for  military  genius,  which  is  paralleled 
only  in  the  history  of  the  world  by  the  fame  of 
Napoleon.  In  five  years  Alexander,  with  a  com- 
paratively small  but  immensely  capable  Greek 
army,  was  complete  master  of  the  Persian  Em- 
pire, with  the  emperor  Darius  a  fugitive. 

In  the  decisive  battle  of  Arbela,  it  is  recorded, 
though  probably  with  exaggeration,  that  fifty 
thousand  Greeks  defeated  a  million  Persians. 
The  three  Persian  capitals,  Susa,  Persepolis,  and 
Babylon,  immediately  surrendered,  and  soon 
after,  Darius  suffered  the  fate  which  seems  to 
have  been  common  to  the  monarchs  of  the  period 
both  Greek  and  Persian;  he  was  assassinated. 
The  debasing  effects  of  war  and  conquest,  com- 
bined with  the  almost  inconceivable  luxury  and 


42      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

dissipation  of  the  Orient,  resulted  in  the  com- 
mission by  Alexander,  in  his  later  years,  of  a 
series  of  revolting  crimes  which  gravely  chal- 
lenge his  surname — "The  Great." 

It  must  be  conceded,  however,  that  his  exploits 
brought  benefits  to  modern  Europe  which  were 
unequalled  by  any  results  of  the  careers  of  Han- 
nibal and  Napoleon,  even  though  we  concede  the 
latter  to  have  done  much  toward  the  break-up  of 
the  feudal  system.  The  chief  credit  for  this 
must  in  large  measure  be  laid  to  the  circum- 
stance that  in  his  youth  he  had  for  tutor,  a  great 
conqueror  in  the  world  of  thought — Aristotle. 
His  great  teacher  inspired  him  with  a  love  of 
natural  history,  and  the  funds  which  enabled 
Aristotle  to  publish  his  great  work  on  that  sub- 
ject, were  furnished  by  Alexander.  It  is  quite 
probable  that  the  desire  to  discover  and  collect 
new  plants  and  animals,  figured  in  the  ambitions 
of  the  Macedonian  campaign,  but  as  the  cam- 
paign proceeded  this  noble  impulse  was  rapidly 
swallowed  in  an  insatiable  thirst  for  rapine  and 
conquest.  It  was  destined  however,  that  soon 
after  his  death,  one  of  the  purest  aims  of  his 
youth  was  to  be  brought  to  a  magnificent  realiza- 
tion. 

During  his  campaign,  he  founded  several 
Alexandrias  to  perpetuate  his  name.  The  only 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          43 

one  which  really  served  that  purpose  was  the 
one  he  set  up  on  the  Mediterranean  coast  of 
Egypt.  When  he  lay  dying  in  Babylon,  follow- 
ing a  drunken  orgy,  and  he  was  asked  by  the 
generals  who  were  gathered  at  his  bedside,  to 
whom  he  bequeathed  his  empire,  he  answered, 
"To  the  strongest."  As  none  proved  strong 
enough,  it  fell  to  pieces,  and  his  generals  fought 
each  other  for  the  parts.  Following  a  decisive 
battle  at  Ipsus  in  Phrygia,  Syria  and  the  East 
went  to  Seleucus — another  king  destined  for 
assassination— Thrace  to  Lysimachus,  Macedonia 
to  Cassander,  and — most  important  for  our  story 
and  for  later  European  civilization — Egypt  to 

Ptolemy. 

Ptolemy  was  the  most  far-sighted  of  all 
Alexander's  generals.  The  dynasty  of  which  he 
was  the  first  king,  ruled  Egypt  293  years,  clos- 
ing with  the  death  of  the  famous  Cleopatra,  the 
last  of  her  line,  in  30  B.  C.  when  Egypt  became 
a  Roman  province.  The  rule  of  the  Ptolemies 
is  the  brightest  chapter  in  the  long  history  of 
Egypt,  and  is  marked  by  the  absence  of  discon- 
tent and  revolt.  Ptolemy  I  was  known  as 
Ptolemy  Soter— the  saviour— a  surname  given 
to  him  by  the  Rhodians  for  his  preservation  of 
them  from  their  enemies.  He  maintained  his 


44      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

palace  at  Alexandria,  and  made  that  city  the 
capital  of  Egypt. 

Alexandria  was  in  many  respects,  the  most 
remarkable  city  of  the  ancient  world.  It  was 
designed  by  the  celebrated  Greek  architect 
Dinocrates,  engaged  by  Alexander  because  of 
the  great  reputation  he  had  acquired  by  the  re- 
building of  the  temple  of  Diana  at  Ephesus.  The 
reading  of  a  description  of  the  city  reminds  one 
of  some  of  the  plans  submitted  to  the  various 
modern  municipalities  for  the  making  of  a  city 
beautiful,  except  that  no  modern  city  would 
possess  the  artistic  skill  or  the  civic  enterprise 
necessary  to  even  approach  the  magnificence  of 
the  Ptolemaic  capital.  The  city  was  built  on  a 
neck  of  land  washed  by  the  Mediterranean  on  the 
north  and  Lake  Maroetis  on  the  south.  Its  streets 
were  laid  out  in  straight  parallel  lines,  the  prin- 
cipal street  being  about  three  miles  long  and 
two  hundred  feet  broad.  This  was  intersected 
at  right  angles  by  a  shorter  street  of  the  same 
breadth,  making  the  figure  of  a  cross.  Along 
both  these  streets  were  houses,  temples,  and  pub- 
lic buildings  of  almost  indescribable  magnifi- 
cence. In  a  two  years'  funeral  journey  the  body 
of  Alexander  was  brought  from  Babylon  and 
buried  in  a  splendid  mausoleum  at  the  intersec- 
tion of  the  two  main  streets.  The  city  waa 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          45 

divided  into  three  sections:  (1)  the  Jewish 
quarter  on  the  northeast;  (2)  the  Egyptian 
quarter  on  the  west,  which  had  been  the  site 
of  the  Egyptian  village  Rhacotis,  and,  (3)  the 
Brucheum,  which  was  the  royal  or  Greek  quarter 
and  was  the  most  magnificent  part  of  the  city. 

Alexander  had  a  very  high  opinion  of  Jews  as 
citizens  and  went  to  great  trouble  to  bring  large 
numbers  of  them  from  Palestine  to  Alexandria. 
This  policy  was  continued  by  Ptolemy  Soter,  who 
brought  a  hundred  thousand  more  after  the  siege 
of  Jerusalem.  The  second  Ptolemy,  Ptolemy 
Philadelphus,  redeemed  from  slavery  a  hundred 
and  ninety-eight  thousand,  paying  their  Egypt- 
ian owners  a  just  money  equivalent  for  each. 
The  Jews  were  treated  in  all  respects  as  the 
equals  of  the  Macedonians,  which  attracted 
thousands  of  Jews  from  Syria.  Never  before, 
or  since  probably,  have  the  Jews  been  so  con- 
siderately treated  and  they  laid  aside  many  of 
their  national  distinctions,  and  were  proud  to 
be  known  as  Hellenistic  Jews. 

The  same  wise  and  liberal  policy  was  followed 
with  the  Egyptians.  They  were  made  to  forget 
that  they  were  a  conquered  race  and  that  the 
Ptolemies  were  foreign  kings.  They  were  en- 
couraged in  the  holding  of  high  civil  offices  and 
especial  deference  was  shown  to  the  ancient 


46      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Egyptian  religion.  They  were  allowed  to  build 
their  temples  in  their  own  quarters,  and  the 
Temple  of  Serapis,  known  as  the  Serapion,  was 
one  of  the  most  palatial  structures  in  the  city. 
On  great  religious  days  the  reigning  Ptolemy 
would  make  a  spectacular  visit  to  show  homage 
to  the  Egyptian  gods.  Throughout  the  rest  of 
Egypt  the  Egyptians  were  allowed  all  the  form 
and  pomp  of  royalty,  while  the  real  power  was 
retained  by  the  Macedonian  king.  The  Greek 
quarter  became  the  intellectual  center  of  attrac- 
tion for  all  Greeks.  Its  unrestrained  freedom  of 
thought  caused  an  immigration  of  Athenian 
philosophers  and  scientists  which  worked  the 
ruin  of  Athens. 

The  most  remarkable  single  institution  in 
Athens  was  its  world-famous  Museum.  This  in- 
stitution performed  functions  approximately 
similar  to  those  of  the  modern  university  and  is 
said  to  have  housed  at  one  time  as  many  as  four- 
teen thousand  students.  As  a  seat  of  learning 
it  was  without  parallel  in  the  ancient  world.  The 
most  important  element  in  its  equipment  was 
its  enormous  library.  While  much  of  the  ma- 
terial for  the  library  was  collected  by  Ptolemy 
Soter,  its  establishment  was  made  by  his  succes- 
sor, Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  who  was  perhaps  the 
most  marked  example  of  the  love  of  learning 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          47 

which  seems  to  have  run  hereditarily  through 
the  entire  dynasty.  Demetrius  Phalareus,  con- 
sidered the  most  learned  man  of  the  age,  brought 
specially  from  Athens  where  he  had  been  gov- 
ernor for  many  years,  for  the  task,  was  instructed 
to  collect  all  the  writings  in  the  world,  and  car- 
ried out  his  orders  with  great  diligence  and 
without  regard  to  cost.  A  large  body  of  tran- 
scribers was  constantly  maintained  in  the 
Museum  to  make  correct  copies  of  such  works  as 
their  owners  refused  to  sell.  Any  book  brought 
into  Egypt  by  foreigners  was  at  once  taken  to 
the  Museum  and  a  correct  copy  made,  which  was 
given  to  the  owner  while  the  original  was  placed 
in  the  library.  In  most  cases  considerable  sums 
of  money  were  paid  as  indemnity.  Draper  says 
that  Ptolemy  Euergetes,  having  obtained  from 
Athens  the  works  of  Euripides,  Sophocles,  and 
Aeschylus,  sent  their  transcripts  together  with 
about  $15,000  as  payment  for  the  originals. 
When  works  were  translated  as  well  as  tran- 
scribed, enormous  sums  were  involved.  On  the 
recommendation  of  Demetrius  the  famous  trans- 
lation of  the  bible,  known  as  the  Septuagint,  was 
made.  This  was  done  at  an  almost  inconceivable 
expense,  and  the  translation  had  no  rival  until 
centuries  later,  when  Jerome  completed  his  Latin 
translation  known  as  the  Vulgate.  The  library 


48      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

in  the  Museum  increased  rapidly  until  it  is  said 
to  have  contained  four  hundred  thousand 
volumes. 

The  Museum  was  built  in  the  Brucheum  where 
it  bordered  on  the  Egyptian  quarter.  Close  to 
it  across  the  border  was  the  Serapion  and  it  was 
decided,  probably  for  lack  of  space  and  other 
reasons,  to  form  a  second  library,  known  as  the 
daughter  library,  in  the  Serapion.  The  daugh- 
ter library  increased  until  it  contained  three 
hundred  thousand  volumes.  The  two  libraries 
had  on  their  shelves  practically  all  the  books 
then  known.  These  libraries  were  to  serve  one 
of  the  three  principal  objects  of  the  Museum — 
the  perpetuation  of  knowedge.  Another  object 
was  the  increase  of  knowledge,  and  for  this  there 
was  connected  with  the  Museum,  botanical  and 
zoological  gardens,  containing  plants  and  ani- 
mals gathered  from  all  parts  of  the  world.  There 
was  also  an  astronomical  observatory,  containing 
spheres,  globes,  armils,  astrolabes,  and  all  instru- 
ments then  known.  For  the  measuring  of  time, 
they  had  the  water-clock  of  Ctesibius.  A  very 
important  department  was  the  medical  and 
anatomical,  which  carried  on  dissection  for  the 
increase  of  knowledge  of  the  human  body. 

The  third  aim  of  the  Museum  was  the  diffu- 
sion of  knowledge.  This  was  accomplished 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          49 

chiefly  by  lectures,  discussions,  and  conversa- 
tions carried  on  for  the  instruction  of  the  im- 
mense body  of  students  which  had  nocked  there 
from  all  the  leading  countries  of  the  world.  It 
is  not  surprising  that  such  an  institution  pro- 
duced the  greatest  scientists  and  scholars  re- 
corded in  the  history  of  the  times.  Mathema- 
ticians, physicists,  and  astronomers,  whose 
genius  has  never  been  surpassed,  and  whose 
names  will  never  be  forgotten,  created  what  is 
known  as  the  Alexandrian  school.  These  men 
and  their  labors  constitute  the  real  birth  of 
science.  It  was  the  first  great  attempt  of  the 
organization  of  human  knowledge. 

Before  the  labors  of  the  Alexandrian  astrono- 
mers, all  that  was  known  of  the  science  was  to  be 
found  in  the  writings  of  Aristotle,  who  had  col- 
lected the  current  ideas  of  his  time  on  this,  as 
on  many  other  subjects.  As  we  shall  see  pres- 
ently, it  was  the  curse  of  the  latter  middle  ages 
that  the  fragmentary  knowledge  of  Aristotle 
was  regarded  by  the  Christian  Church  as  the 
final  revelation  of  all  that  should  or  could  be 
known  about  the  universe.  This  was  entirely 
contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  peripatetic  philoso- 
pher, who  fully  realized  and  explained  the  tenta- 
tive character  of  his  own  conclusions.  Aristotle 
was  called  the  peripatetic  philosopher  from  his 


50       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

habit  of  walking  while  addressing  his  pupils.  He 
especially  warned  his  readers  not  to  accept  his 
explanation  of  planatary  motion  but  to  compare 
that  with  their  own  ideas  and  what  they  had 
learned  from  others. 

Aristotle  was  especially  to  be  received  with 
caution  on  astronomical  subjects,  as  he  himself 
was  not  an  astronomer.  He  believed,  in  common 
with  all  Greek  writers  on  this  science,  that  the 
world  was  round,  and  this  sound  opinion  was 
based  probably  not  so  much  on  observation  and 
evidence  as  upon  the  Aristotelian  idea  that  the 
circle  was  the  perfect  form.  The  Pythagoreans 
had  accomplished  a  little  in  astronomy  and  the 
Greeks  had  inherited  something  from  the  Baby- 
lonian and  Chaldean  astronomers  as  a  result  of 
the  Macedonian  campaign.  The  scientific  men 
who  accompanied  Alexander  obtained  from  the 
Babylonian  astronomers  a  series  of  observations 
of  the  eclipses  of  the  moon  covering  a  period  of 
1903  years.  While  the  Babylonians  were  dili- 
gent observers,  they  accomplished  next  to  noth- 
ing in  astronomical  theory  and  it  was  left  for 
Alexandria  to  produce  the  first  really  great  as- 
tronomers. 

The  first  of  these  was  Aristarchus  who  must 
be  accounted  one  of  the  great  astronomers  of  all 
time.  Contrary  to  the  established  opinion  of  his 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          51 

period,  he  believed  that  the  earth  moved  in  an 
orbit  around  the  sun,  a  clear  anticipation  of 
Copernican  astronomy.  At  the  first  glance  it 
seems  to  be  a  great  misfortune  that  Aristarchus 
failed  to  convince  contemporary  or  later  Greek 
astronomers.  If  this  conception  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem could  have  been  embodied  a  few  hundred 
years  later  in  the  Almagest  of  Ptolemy,  it  might 
have  prevented  the  great  war  between  science  and 
the  church,  waged  around  Galileo  over  the  Co- 
pernican theory.  Qn  second  thought,  however,  the 
mistake  of  the  church  in  accepting  the  earth  as 
the  center  of  the  universe  has  probably  done 
more  to  emancipate  the  modern  world  from 
church  authority  than  any  single  fact  in  its  en- 
tire career.  One  of  the  books  written  by  Arist- 
archus, which  is  still  extent,  is  entitled  ' '  On  the 
Magnitudes  and  Distances  of  the  Sun  and 
Moon."  In  this  work  he  uses  an  ingenious 
method  for  ascertaining  the  comparative  dis- 
tances of  the  sun  and  the  moon  from  the  earth. 
His  method  was  based  on  observing  the  moon  at 
quadrature.  Aristarchus  knew  the  moon  to  be 
illumined  by  the  light  of  the  sun  and  that,  there- 
fore, when  the  moon  was  half  full,  it  must  be  at 
right  angles  with  the  earth  and  the  sun.  The 
triangle  formed  by  the  three  bodies  would  there- 
fore be  a  right  angled  triangle.  A  calculation 


52      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

well  known  in  geometry  would  then  yield  the 
distance  from  the  earth  to  the  sun  expressed  in 
terms  of  the  distance  from  the  earth  to  the  moon. 
By  this  method  he  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
the  sun  was  from  eighteen  to  twenty  times  the 
distance  of  the  moon  from  the  earth.  The  error 
is  enormous,  as  we  know  now,  and  the  actual 
distance  of  the  sun  from  the  earth  is  four  hun- 
dred times  that  of  the  moon.    It  is  amazing,  how- 
ever, that  Aristarchus  at  his  period  should  have 
even  conceived  such  a  method  of  measurement. 
The  source  of  his  error  is  easily  understood. 
Even  in  our  day,  with  our  wonderful  astronomi- 
cal instruments,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  de- 
termine by  the  method  of  Aristarchus,  when  the 
moon  is  at  quadrature,  because  it  is  impossible 
to  tell  by  direct  observation  of  the  moon  when  it 
is  half  full.    The  moon  being  covered  with  ele- 
vations and  depressions,  the  boundary  line  be- 
tween the  light  and  dark  part  of  it,  known  as 
the  terminator,  is  a  very  irregular  line,  and  it  is 
almost  as  difficult  for  us  as  it  was  for  Aristarchus 
to  know  when  this  line  is  across  the  center  of 
the  moon.    This  determination  being  impossible 
to  us,  with  our  instruments,  must  have  presented 
tremendous  difficuties  to  Aristarchus,  working 
with  the  crude  apparatus  of  his  time. 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA         53 

Belonging  to  the  same  period  was  Apollonius 
of  Perga,  who  labored  in  Alexandria  and  came 
to  be  known  as  the  great  geometer.  He  devel- 
oped the  theory  of  conic  sections  and  introduced 
the  idea  of  epicycles  to  explain  the  apparent 
motion  of  the  planets.  The  greatest  of  all  the 
Alexandrian  geometers,  however,  was  Euclid, 
who  opened  a  geometrical  school  in  Alexandria 
about  300  B.  C.  His  famous  propositions  in 
geometry  have  given  him  a  reputation  as  dura- 
ble as  the  science  itself,  and  notwithstanding 
some  criticism  which  has  been  passed  upon  them 
by  recent  geometers,  they  still  maintain  their 
ground  as  models  of  accuracy  and  perspicuity, 
and  standards  of  exact  demonstration.  They 
were  employed  universally  by  the  Greeks  and 
were  subsequently  translated  and  preserved  by 
the  Arabs,  and  are  still  taught  in  our  schools. 

Perhaps  even  greater  in  mathematics  than 
Euclid  was  Archimedes,  the  most  inventive 
genius  of  antiquity.  He  was  a  native  of  Syra- 
cuse and  spent  almost  all  of  his  life  there.  He 
is  included  in  the  Alexandrian  school  of  scien- 
tists because  he  want  to  Alexandria  in  his  youth 
and  completed  his  education  in  the  museum  un- 
der the  Alexandrian  mathematician  and  geome- 
ter Conon.  This  was  about  half  a  century  after 
Euclid.  He  then  returned  to  his  native  city  and 


54      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

immediately  proceeded  to  make  practical  appli- 
cation of  his  knowledge  and  succeeded  in  estab- 
lishing the  science  of  engineering  upon  a  mathe- 
matical basis.    He  was  the  devoted  friend,  and 
some  say  a  relative  of  Hiero,  the  King  of  Syra- 
cuse.    The  famous  Archimedian  screw  was  in- 
vented to  raise  water  from  the  hold  of  one  of 
Hiero 's  ships.    When  Syracuse  was  besieged  by 
the  Romans,  Hiero  depended  chiefly  upon  the  in- 
genuity of  Archimedes  to  hold  them  at  bay.  This 
he  succeeded  in  doing  by  various  contrivances, 
which  prolonged  the  siege  for  three  years.    Some 
of  the  stories  told  of  these  devices  are  probably 
false  or  greatly  exaggerated.     Among  these  is 
the  story  of  the  burning  mirror  with  which  he 
is  said  to  have  thrown  the  heat  of  the  sun  upon 
the  Roman  ships,  setting  them  on  fire  when  they 
were  within  a  bow  shot  of  the  city  wall.    This 
story  is  not  now  accepted  because  it  is  not  men- 
tioned by  either  Polybius,  Livy  or  Plutarch. 
The  French  scientist  Buffon,  however,  demon- 
strated that  something  of  this  kind  could  be  ac- 
complished.   Probably  the  truth  is  that  Archi- 
medes did  invent  a  burning  mirror  but  that  he 
did  not  set  fire  to  the  Roman  ships.    He  invented 
a  number  of  engines  of  war,  one  of  which  is  said 
to  have  reached  over  the  city  wall,  seized  the 
Roman  ships,  lifted  them  high  in  the  air  and 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDKIA          55 

then  suddenly  dropped  them  back  into  the  sea. 
While  he  probably  had  devices  which  greatly 
damaged  the  Roman  fleet,  this  enormous  claw 
may  be  regarded  as  a  myth.  It  may  be  said  to 
the  credit  of  the  Eoman  general  Marcellus,  who 
conquered  the  city,  that  he  gave  strict  orders 
to  his  soldiers  that  no  harm  should  come  to 
Archimedes.  This  disposition  of  the  E-oman  gen- 
eral to  honor  brave  and  effective  foes,  which 
still  persists  in  our  day  in  the  custom  of  allow- 
ing conspicuously  brave  enemies  to  keep  their 
swords,  was  a  departure  from  the  policy  of  Alex- 
ander, who  usually  visited  especial  punishment 
on  those  who  had  succeeded  in  frustrating  his 
plans.  It  is  recorded,  however,  that  when  the 
soldiers  entered  Syracuse,  one  of  them  found 
Archimedes  absorbed,  to  complete  forgetfulness 
of  the  battle,  in  drawing  a  geometrical  figure 
on  the  sand.  The  soldier,  not  having  the  least 
idea  who  he  was,  killed  him.  Marcellus  lamented 
his  death,  gave  him  honorable  burial  and  be- 
friended his  surviving  relatives.  In  fulfillment 
of  his  own  request,  his  tombstone  was  marked 
with  the  figure  of  a  sphere  inscribed  in  a  cylin- 
der. When  Cicero  was  in  Sicily,  more  than  a 
hundred  years  later,  he  discovered  the  tomb  of 
Archimedes  overgrown  with  thorns  and  briars 


56      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

and  considered  himself  extremely  fortunate  in 
being  able  to  rescue  it  from  oblivion. 

We  return  to  the  Alexandrian  astronomers 
with  the  name  of  Hipparchus,  who  earned 
the  reputation  of  being  the  greatest  observ- 
ing astronomer  of  the  ancients.  Competent 
critics  have  agreed  that,  notwithstanding  the 
remarkable  insight  of  Aristarchus,  Hippar- 
chus must  be  reckoned  the  greatest  of  the 
ancient  astronomers.  Unfortunately  only  one 
of  his  many  books  has  been  preserved.  There 
is  no  proof  that  he  belonged  to  Alexandria, 
though  it  is  quite  probable  that  he  visited 
it  and  made  observations  there  and  his  work  is 
so  associated  with  that  of  the  Alexandrian  as- 
tronomers that  there  is  some  justice  in  his  in- 
clusion in  that  school.  He  made  more  extensive 
observations  than  any  other  astronomer  of  his 
time,  and  made  systematic  use  of  old  observa- 
tions comparing  them  with  later  ones  to  dis- 
cover astronomical  changes  which  could  not  be 
detected  within  a  single  lifetime. 

By  comparing  one  of  his  own  observations  of 
the  summer  solstice  with  a  similar  one  made  by 
Aristarchus  fourteen  years  before,  he  found  that 
the  anciently  received  value  of  365*4  days  was 
too  great  by  seven  minutes.  This  calculation 
by  Hipparchus  is  within  twelve  seconds  of  the 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          57 

truth.    By  very  careful  observation  of  the  sol- 
stices and  equinoxes,  he  discovered  that  the  year 
is  not  divided  by  these  into  four  equal  parts. 
The  sun  required  94i/2  days  to  pass  from  the 
vernal  equinox  to  the  summer  solstice  while  it 
took  only  92i/2  to  make  the  journey  from  the 
summer  solstice  to  the  autumnal  equinox.    This 
observation  led  Hipparchus  to  the  great  discov- 
ery of  the  eccentricity  of  the  solar  orbit ;  as  we 
know  now,  of  course,  it  really  indicated  the 
eccentricity  of  the  earth's  orbit  around  the  sun. 
He  was  the  first  to  construct  astronomical  tables, 
which  have  played  so  important  a  part  in  the 
history  of  astronomy.    These  were  his  tables  of 
the  sun.    His  observations  of  the  moon  led  him 
to  one  of  the  finest  theoretical  deductions  of 
lunar  astronomy,  known  as  the  acceleration  of 
the  mean  lunar  motion.  This  discovery  furnished 
Newton  with  one  of  the  most  delicate  tests  of  his 
gravitation  theory.    Hipparchus  also  discovered 
the  eccentricity  of  the  lunar  orbit  and  its  incli- 
nation to  the  plane  of  the  ecliptic. 

The  appearance  of  a  new  star  induced  him  to 
direct  his  attention  for  the  present  from  the  sun 
and  moon  to  the  stars.  By  very  arduous  and 
protracted  labor  he  made  a  star  catalogue  of  the 
principal  stars  visible  above  his  horizon,  fixing 
the  relative  positions  and  configurations  of  1080 


58      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

stars.  This  led  him  to  one  of  the  greatest  of  all 
his  discoveries,  the  shifting  of  the  vernal 
equinox,  indicating  the  precession  of  the  equi- 
noxes. By  comparing  his  observations  with 
those  of  Aristillus  and  Timocharis,  of  fifteen 
years  before,  he  discovered  that  the  vernal  equi- 
nox had  advanced  two  degrees,  which  he  cal- 
culated to  be  a  rate  of  forty-eight  seconds  a  year. 
This  is  astonishingly  near  the  truth,  as  a  rate  of 
fifty  seconds  and  a  fraction  is  now  established. 
Most  people  who  buy  a  planisphere  at  the  sta- 
tioners for  the  purpose  of  star  gazing,  would  be 
surprised  to  learn  that  this  method  was  invented 
by  Hipparchus  over  two  thousand  years  ago. 
Geography  is  also  indebted  to  him  for  the  happy 
method  of  fixing  the  places  on  the  earth  by  lati- 
tude and  longitude. 

Before  passing  to  the  last  of  the  great  Greek 
astronomers,  we  will  return  to  the  period  of 
Euclid  and  note  the  labors  of  the  Alexandrian 
geographer,  Eratosthenes.  The  most  celebrated 
of  his  important  labors  was  an  effort  to  deter- 
mine the  size  of  the  earth.  It  was  known  that 
Syene,  the  most  southern  city  of  ancient  Egypt, 
was  situated  exactly  on  the  equator,  and  at  the 
summer  solstice  the  gnomon  cast  no  shadow,  and 
the  rays  of  the  sun  illumined  the  bottom  of  a 
deep  well  in  that  city.  On  the  same  day,  Eratos- 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          59 

thenes  calculated  that  the  meridional  distance 
of  the  sun  from  the  zenith  at  Alexandria  was 
about  seven  degrees,  or  a  one-fiftieth  part  of  the 
circumference  of  the  meridional  circle.  The  dis- 
tance from  Syene  to  Alexandria  was  measured 
to  be  5000  stadia.  Eratosthenes  multiplied  this 
by  fifty,  calculating  the  circumference  to  be  250,- 
000  stadia.  Unfortunately  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing  the  length  of  the  Greek  stadia,  so 
that  we  cannot  tell  the  correctness  or  incorrect- 
ness of  this  rough  but  ingenious  calculation. 

After  the  death  of  Hipparchus,  Greek  astron- 
omy and  Greek  science  suffered  a  relapse.  Many 
writers  have  attempted  to  discover  the  reasons, 
and  various  explanations  have  been  offered. 
Probably  the  most  acceptable  is  one  which 
ascribes  the  intellectual  decline  of  Alexandria 
to  the  successful  rivalry  of  Eome,  which  grad- 
ually became  the  intellectual  center  of  the  then 
known  world.  Freedom  of  opinion,  however,  was 
preserved  in  the  capital  of  Egypt  and  some  scat- 
tering observations  of  the  stars  and  an  occasional 
work  on  mathematics  showed  that  the  scientific 
spirit  had  not  disappeared  and  about  130  A.  D. 
the  last  and  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of  the 
Greek  astronomers  appeared  in  Alexandria. 
This  was  the  famous  Ptolemy.  He  was  not  re- 
lated to  the  kings  of  the  Ptolemy  dynasty,  al- 


60      SCIENCE  AND  SUPEKSTITION 

though  some  writers  have  so  asserted.  The 
name  Ptolemy  was  quite  common  in  Egypt.  His 
greatest  service  to  the  science  of  astronomy  was 
the  collection  of  the  knowledge  of  his  time  into 
his  great  work  of  thirteen  books,  known  as  the 
Almagest.  This  work  was  the  Bible  of  astron- 
omy down  to  the  days  of  Copernicus  and  for 
many  centuries  Ptolemy  was  described  as  the 
"Prince  of  the  Astronomers."  Recent  investi- 
gation however,  proves  that  as  an  astronomer 
Ptolemy  was  considerably  inferior  to  Hippar- 
chus.  The  work  of  Hipparchus  is  really  the 
basis  of  the  Almagest.  Delambre,  the  French 
historian  of  astronomy  writes  of  Hipparchus,  as 
follows : 

"When  we  consider  all  that  Hipparchus  in- 
vented or  perfected,  and  reflect  upon  the  num- 
ber of  his  works  and  the  mass  of  calculations 
which  they  imply,  we  must  regard  him  as  one 
of  the  most  astonishing  men  of  antiquity,  and 
as  the  greatest  of  all  in  the  sciences  which  are 
not  purely  speculative  and  which  require  a  com- 
bination of  geometrical  knowledge  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  phenomena,  to  be  observed  only  by  dili- 
gent attention  and  refined  instruments." 

The  same  authority  says  of  Ptolemy  that  after 
a  laborious  and  minute  examination  of  the 
Almagest,  he  doubts  whether  anything  is  con- 


SCIENCE  IN  ALEXANDRIA          61 

tained  in  the  great  work,  beyond  the  author's 
own  statement,  from  which  it  can  be  decisively 
inferred  that  Ptolemy  ever  observed  at  all.  His 
own  catalogue  of  stars  contained  only  1022,  be- 
ing 58  below  the  catalogue  of  Hipparchus.  His 
determination  of  the  positions  of  the  stars  gives 
every  evidence  of  being  obtained,  not  by  his  own 
observations,  but  by  calculation  of  changes  from 
the  time  of  Hipparchus. 

Delambre  justly  remarks  that  if  any  modern 
astronomer  were  to  adopt  a  similar  course,  he 
would  immediately  forfeit  all  claims  to  confi- 
dence. But  Ptolemy  stands  alone  having  no 
contemporary  astronomers  or  writers  to  judge 
his  methods.  His  principal  astronomical  dis- 
covery was  that  of  the  evection  of  the  moon,  but 
the  socalled  Ptolemaic  system  of  the  universe 
is  in  reality  the  system  of  Hipparchus. 

Even  after  its  decline,  the  scientific  reputation 
of  Alexandria  was  so  great  in  the  days  of  Julius 
Caesar  that  when  the  Roman  calendar  of  the 
period  had  caused  confusion  by  its  errors,  Caesar 
brought  from  Alexandria  the  astronomer  Sosig- 
enes.  By  his  advice  the  lunar  year  was  abol- 
ished and  the  civil  year  was  regulated  entirely 
by  the  sun  and  the  Julian  calendar  introduced. 

Alexandria  and  its  science  have  been  dealt 
with  at  some  length  here  to  give  the  basis  for 


62      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

a  just  estimate  of  the  merits  of  the  struggle 
between  Alexandrian  science  and  the  Christian 
religion  which  led  to  pitched  battles  on  the 
streets  of  the  city.  Before  that  story  can  be  re- 
lated in  its  proper  setting,  we  shall  be  obliged 
to  observe  the  rise  of  Christianity  in  the  Roman 
Empire. 


CHRISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS 

AS  all  students  of  the  period  have  observed, 
the  triumph  of  the  Roman  legions  over 
the  armies  of  Greece,  was  followed  by 
the  victory  of  Greek  learning  in  the  minds  of 
Eoman  scholars.     From  this  pupilary  relation 
Eoman  thought  never  emerged,  for  by  the  time 
it  was  essaying  to  stand  upon  its  own  feet,  the 
Christian  religion  supervened  and  arrested  the 
intellectual  development  of  Europe  for  more 
than  a  thousand  years. 

There  was  one  conspicuous  element  in  Roman 
public  policy  which  can  hardly  be  said  to  be 
copied  from  the  Greeks,  as  it  was  quite  common 
among  the  ancient  nations.  This  was  the  practi- 
cal unanimity  of  the  educated  classes  in  the 
opinion  that,  while  the  miracles  and  vagaries  of 
religion  were  incredible  to  them,  they  must  be 
accorded  a  pretended  reverence  to  avoid  the  in- 
tellectual awakening,  and  the  consequent  discon- 
tent of  the  subject  masses.  Many  earnestly  reli- 
gious students  have  emerged  from  their  studies 
with  the  clear  conviction  that  this  always  has 
been,  and  will  always  remain,  the  chief  function 
of  religion,  this  is  why  the  study  of  history  ranks 
63 


64      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

with  the  cultivation  of  science,  as  a  force  making 
for  social  progress, 

We  have  here  also,  the  real  explanation  of  the 
insecurity  of  ancient  knowledge  and  freedom  of 
opinion.  In  the  carefully  preserved  ignorance 
of  the  masses,  the  educated  rulers  found,  in 
times  of  crises,  they  had  raised  a  specter  they 
could  not  lay — they  had  nursed  a  beast  which 
turned  to  devour  them.  In  our  own  time  hope  of 
escape  from  a  recrudescence  of  decadent  Chris- 
tian dogmas,  or  the  disastrous  triumph  of  such 
superstitious  and  reactionary  cults  as  the  half 
mis-named  Christian  science,  lies  in  the  thor- 
ough democratization  of  scientific  knowledge. 

There  is  no  lack  of  evidence  of  the  general 
emancipation  from  the  superstitions  in  the  Em- 
pire, enjoyed  by  the  rulers  and  scholars  of  Rome. 
Cicero  tells  the  story  of  a  consul  of  the  Claudian 
gens,  who  when  about  to  engage  in  the  first 
Punic  war,  openly  flouted  the  sacred  auspices. 
When  the  sacred  poultry  were  let  out  of  the 
coop,  to  indicate,  if  they  should  drop  a  grain 
from  the  bill,  the  success  of  his  undertak- 
ing, they  refused  to  eat.  Claudius,  disgusted 
with  the  mummery  of  a  performance  he  did  not 
believe  in,  caused  them  to  be  thrown  in  the 
water,  saying  that  they  might  drink  if  they 
would  not  eat.  For  this  irreverence,  although 


CHRISTIANS  AND  EMPEEORS       65 

this  form  of  diviniation  was  then  falling  into 
disuse,  he  was  condemned  by  the  people.  His 
colleague  Junius  also  ignored  the  auspices,  and 
there-by  fell  into  such  deep  disfavor  that  he  com- 
mitted suicide.  Cato,  a  rigid  observer  of  all 
Roman  ceremonies,  said  that  the  haruspices — 
the  Etruscan  name  for  the  auspices — might  well 
laugh  in  each  others  faces.  Julius  Caesar,  in 
whom,  says  Robertson,  "we  see  the  Roman  brain 
at  its  strongest,"  expressed  repeatedly  his  con- 
tempt for  the  auspices  and  avowed  his  disbelief 
in  the  popular  doctrine  of  immortality.  He 
came  off  better  than  Claudius  and  Junius  be- 
cause of  his  greater  power,  and  also  probably  be- 
cause he  won  his  battles  while  they  lost  theirs. 
Even  Dean  Merivale  admits  that  Caesar  "pro- 
fessed without  reserve  the  principles  of  the  un- 
believers." And  Julius  Caesar  was  thoroughly 
typical  of  the  men  of  action  of  the  Roman  world. 
The  hypocritical  program  of  ruling  the  people 
by  clouding  their  minds  with  discredited  super- 
stitions met  with  great  difficulties  in  Rome.  The 
Roman  generals  brought  home  from  their  war- 
like expeditions,  hordes  of  prisoners  of  war,  and 
each  new  horde  brought  with  it  a  new  religion. 
The  Roman  policy  required  that  each  new  reli- 
gion be  placed  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  old 
ones.  This  involved  the  necessity  of  the  widest 


66      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

possible  toleration  between  the  adherents  of  the 
various  faiths.  It  was  precisely  at  this  point 
that  Christianity  impinged  upon  the  religious 
serenity  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

Lucretius,  the  most  brilliant  of  all  the  Roman 
poets  and  scholars,  wrote  his  world  masterpiece, 
"On  the  Nature  of  the  World"  in  which  he  gives 
the  highest  achievements  of  ancient  science,  to 
the  utter  rout  of  religion;  Juvenal  wrote  his 
keen  satires ;  Lucian  devoted  a  genius  of  the  first 
magnitude  to  lampooning  the  gods;  but  what- 
ever objections  the  Roman  government  might 
have  to  such  proceedings  were  purely  political. 
They  were  not  impious  blasphemies,  but  a  men- 
ace to  the  stability  of  society,  because  they  dis- 
turbed its  religious  foundations.  The  so-called 
crime  of  heresy  was  unknown  in  pre-christian 
Rome.  Renan  says : ' '  We  may  search  in  vain  the 
whole  Roman  law  before  Constantino  for  a  single 
passage  against  freedom  of  thought,  and  the  his- 
tory of  imperial  government  furnishes  no  in- 
stance of  a  prosecution  for  entertaining  an  ab- 
stract doctrine."  It  did  not  occur  to  the  Romans 
that  the  gods  needed  human  defenders;  their 
attitude  was  expressed  in  the  saying  of  the  Em- 
peror Tiberius:  "If  the  gods  are  insulted,  let 
them  see  to  it  themselves." 


CHEISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS       67 

In  their  first  acquaintance  with  the  Christians, 
the  Romans  regarded  them  as  a  sect  of  the  Jews. 
The  Jews  were  in  disfavor  with  the  Romans  be- 
cause they  refused  to  concur  in  the  Roman  policy 
of  friendly  tolerance  of  every  religion  for  every 
other  religion.  With  the  Jew,  as  later  with  the 
Christian,  his  own  religion  was  true,  and  every 
other  religion  was  an  abominable  idolatry.  While 
the  Romans  made  some  unjustifiable  attacks  on 
the  Jews,  Robertson  says :  ' '  It  was  the  constant 
policy  of  the  Emperors  to  let  them  alone  and  to 
protect  them  against  the  hatred  which  their  own 
fanaticism  aroused."  This  policy  worked  well, 
but  presently  the  Romans  observed,  to  their  dis- 
may, that  certain  of  the  Jews  were  proselitizing, 
a  practice  which  flew  in  the  face  of  all  Roman 
precedent.  Rome  expected  every  worshipper  to 
keep  to  his  own  religion,  and  leave  every  other 
worshipper  to  the  undisturbed  enjoyment  of  the 
same  privilege.  When  they  discovered  that 
the  Jews  who  were  seeking  to  make  converts 
among  the  Romans  were  not  judaists,  but  Chris- 
tians, their  anger  was  turned  on  the  Christian 
faith.  When  the  Romans  who  became  Christians, 
began  to  follow  the  same  evil  example  of  vilify- 
ing every  other  faith  in  the  interest  of  their 
own,  the  governing  Romans  saw  the  whole  social 
fabric  threatened  with  disintegration.  Then  it 


68      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

was  that  the  persecution  of  the  Christians  was 
begun.  The  persecution  of  the  Christians  by  the 
Romans  was,  beyond  all  question  due,  not  to 
Roman  intolerance  of  Christianity,  but  to  Chris- 
tian intolerance  of  the  religions  which  had  been 
guaranteed  protection  by  the  tolerant  Romans. 
Any  one  who  reaches  any  other  conclusion  is 
guilty  of  a  strange  mis-reading  of  Roman  his- 
tory. Notwithstanding  this  provocation,  the 
Emperor  Trajan  issued  an  edict  decreeing  that 
Christians  were  not  to  be  sought  out,  that  an- 
onymous charges  were  not  to  be  noticed,  and 
that  an  informer  who  failed  to  establish  his 
charge  should  be  liable  to  be  punished  under 
the  laws  against  calumny.  All  of  which  was  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  later  procedure  of  the 
Christian  inquisition.  The  Christians  them- 
selves recognized  that  the  edict  of  Trajan  pro- 
tected them,  and  that  their  persecution  pro- 
ceeded from  the  populace  rather  than  the  au- 
thorities. While  there  was  great  laxity  of  appli- 
cation, the  law  was  severe;  the  Christian  re- 
ligion was  outlawed,  and  to  be  found  to  be  a 
Christian  was  punishable  with  death. 

The  Romans  could  not  understand  the  refusal 
of  the  Roman  Christians  to  join  all  other  Romans 
in  the  worship  of  the  Emperors,  as  this  was  more 
of  an  act  of  patriotism  than  religion.  They  felt 


CHEISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS       69 

much  as  would  a  modern  nation  at  a  refusal  to 
show  respect  to  its  flag,  and  as  the  Romans  were 
almost  constantly  at  war,  it  seemed  to  them  like 
treason  to  the  Empire.  Moreover,  this  worship 
of  the  emperors  was  not  required  of  all  the  in- 
habitants, but  only  of  soldiers  and  civil  officers. 
Although  the  Christians,  in  their  written  Apolo- 
gies for  Christianity,  only  thinly  disguised  their 
hatred  of  Roman  civilization,  and  barely  veiled 
their  intention  of  exterminating  all  other  cults 
should  they  get  the  upper  hand,  and  at  the  same 
time  openly  sought  the  glory  of  martyrdom,  the 
actual  number  of  martyred  Christians  was  far 
below  those  claimed  by  later  Christian  writers. 

Professor  Bury,  a  thoroughly  reliable  Roman 
scholar,  says:  "There  were  some  executions  in 
the  second  century — not  many  that  are  well  at- 
tested." Of  the  third  century  he  says: 
' '  Throughout  this  century,  there  were  not  many 
victims,  though  afterwards  the  Christians  in- 
vented a  whole  mythology  of  martyrdoms.  Many 
cruelties  were  imputed  to  Emperors  under  whom 
we  know  that  the  Church  enjoyed  perfect 
peace."  Later,  the  Emperor  Diocletian  made  a 
long  and  bloody  attempt  to  suppress  Christian- 
ity. When  this  was  found  impossible,  because  of 
their  increased  numbers,  the  Emperors  who  fol- 
lowed him  discontinued  the  persecution,  and 


70      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

issued  edicts  of  toleration,  in  the  years  311  and 
313  A.  D.  These  documents  clearly  present  the 
Roman  attitude,  as  will  be  seen  from  Gibbon's 
translation  of  the  first  one  to  appear  in  the  east- 
ern provinces: 

"We  were  particularly  desirous  of  reclaiming 
into  the  way  of  reason  and  nature  the  deluded 
Christians,  who  had  renounced  the  religion  and 
ceremonies  instituted  by  their  fathers  and  pre- 
sumptuously despising  the  practice  of  antiquity, 
had  invented  extravagent  laws  and  opinions  ac- 
cording to  the  dictates  of  their  fancy,  and  had 
collected  a  various  society  from  the  different 
provinces  of  our  Empire.  The  edicts  which  we 
have  published  to  enforce  the  worship  of  the 
gods,  having  exposed  many  of  the  Christians  to 
danger  and  distress,  many  having  suffered  death 
and  many  more,  who  still  persist  in  their  impious 
folly,  being  left  destitute  of  any  public  exercise 
of  religion,  we  are  disposed  to  extend  to  those 
unhappy  men  the  effects  of  our  wonted  clem- 
ency. We  permit  them,  therefore,  freely  to  pro- 
fess their  private  opinions,  and  to  assemble  in 
their  conventicles  without  fear  or  molestation, 
provided  always  that  they  preserve  a  due  respect 
to  the  established  laws  and  government." 

The  second  edict,  known  as  the  Edict  of  Milan, 
brings  us  to  the  period  of  Constantino,  who  was 


CHEISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS       71 

its  author,  and  whose  chief  claim  to  fame  is,  that 
he  was  the  first  Christian  Emperor.  In  the  con- 
fusion of  opinion  as  to  the  merits  of  his  con- 
version, it  is  quite  clear  that  political  interest 
played  a  greater  part  than  individual  conviction, 
in  his  declaration  for  the  new  religion.  The  Em- 
peror Diocletian  adopted  the  idea  of  leaving  his 
rulership  of  the  vast  Roman  Empire  to  a  num- 
ber of  Emperors  who  should  divide  the  Empire 
among  them,  and  rule  as  colleagues.  Instead  of 
which  they  became  bitter  rivals,  plotting  and 
counter-plotting  for  supremacy.  This  struggle 
was  at  its  zenith  when  Constantine  succeeded  his 
father  Constantius,  as  Emperor  of  the  West.  At 
York,  in  Britain,  where  he  was  present  at  his 
father's  death,  he  accepted  the  nomination  to  his 
father's  place,  tendered  him  by  the  army,  and 
shrewdly  laid  his  plans  to  overthrow  his  rivals, 
and  make  himself  supreme  ruler.  By  this  time 
the  Christians  had  become  so  numerous,  that 
the  announcement  of  his  conversion  to  that  faith 
secured  him  supporters  in  every  town,  and  sol- 
diers in  every  army.  It  was  while  marching  to 
the  battle  of  Milvain  Bridge,  near  Rome,  where 
he  conquered  Maxentius,  one  of  his  rival  Em- 
perors, that  he  is  said  to  have  seen  at  noonday, 
a  flaming  cross  in  the  sky,  with  the  motto  "By 
this  conquer."  This  story  has  met  with  a  variety 


72       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

of  reception,  from  the  complete  belief  of  the 
Christian  historian  Eusebius,  who  claims  to  have 
had  it  from  the  Emperor's  own  lips,  to  the 
scepticism  of  Gibbon,  who  treats  it  as  a  fable. 
Gibbon  has  probably  anticipated  the  final  judg- 
ment of  posterity. 

Constantine  was  never  more  than  half  Chris- 
tian, half  pagan.  He  attempted  to  combine  the 
worship  of  Christ  and  Apollo,  and  upon  his  coins 
was  the  inscription  of  one  and  the  image  of  the 
other.  In  this  he  was  typical  of  Christianity 
itself,  which,  as  the  least  research  reveals,  copied 
the  great  body  of  its  ceremonies  from  the  reli- 
gious customs  of  pre-Christian  Rome.  Constan- 
tine also  held  for  a  time  to  the  Roman  policy  of 
toleration.  When  the  Christian  church  divided 
over  the  teachings  of  Arius,  the  Church  Presby- 
ter of  Alexandria,  who  dissented  from  the  doc- 
trine of  the  co-eternity  of  the  Trinity,  insisting 
that  it  was  impossible  for  the  son  to  be  as  old  as 
the  father,  Constantine  desired  a  creed  which 
would  be  broad  enough  to  accept  both  parties  to 
the  controversy.  He  saw  that  his  administra- 
tion would  be  more  effectively  supported  by  a 
united  Church.  When  he  observed  the  Chris- 
tian controversialists  long  enough  to  see  that 
they  had  not  the  slightest  notions  of  tolerance, 
he  took  sides  with  the  most  powerful  sect  and 


CHRISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS        73 

issued  the  following  edict  against  Arms:  "This 
also  I  enjoin,  that  if  any  one  shall  be  found  to 
have  concealed  any  writing  composed  by  Arius, 
and  shall  not  immediately  bring  it  and  consume 
it  in  the  fire,  death  shall  be  his  punishment ;  for 
as  soon  as  ever  he  is  taken  in  this  crime,  he  shall 
suffer  capital  punishment.  God  preserve  you. ' ' 
It  was  Constantine  who  summoned  the  cele- 
brated Council  of  Nicea,  A.  D.  325.  His  idea 
was  that  a  council  of  the  church  rulers  should 
draw  up  a  written  creed  so  that  the  Christians 
of  the  Empire  might  know  what  they  should 
believe.  Thus  originated  the  Nicene  creed. 
After  the  Nicean  Council  had  decided  against 
Arius,  Constantine  ordered  his  banishment.  The 
supposed  deliberation  about  the  case  of  Arius  in 
the  Council  was  a  pretense  maintained  for  the 
sake  of  appearances ;  the  fate  of  the  Alexandrian 
had  been  determined  before  the  Council  gath- 
ered. The  historian  Draper  says:  "No  contem- 
porary for  a  moment  supposed  that  this  was  an 
assembly  of  simple-hearted  men,  anxious  by  a 
mutual  comparison  of  thought,  to  ascertain  the 
truth.  Its  aim  was  not  to  compose  such  a  creed 
as  would  give  unity  to  the  Church,  but  one  so 
worded  that  the  Arians  would  be  compelled  to 
refuse  to  sign  it,  and  so  ruin  themselves." 


74      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Constantine  's  sister,  Constantia,  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Arian  party  and  she  eventually  suc- 
ceeded in  converting  him  to  the  side  of  the 
Presbyter.  This  led  to  Arius  being  restored  to 
imperial  favor.  He  was  invited  to  Constanti- 
nople, which  had  been  the  city  of  Byzantium  un- 
til the  change  was  made  to  perpetuate  the  name 
of  the  Emperor,  and  Alexander  the  Bishop  of 
that  city,  was  ordered  to  receive  him  into  com- 
munion the  day  following  his  arrival.  Bishop 
Alexander  was  a  fanatical  supporter  of  the  anti- 
Arians.  On  receiving  the  Emperor's  orders  he 
fled  from  the  Church  and  falling  prostrate  he 
prayed  to  God  that  he  would  interpose  and  save 
his  servant  from  being  forced  into  this  sin,  even 
if  it  should  be  by  death.  The  only  possible  in- 
terpretation of  this  prayer  is  that  it  was  a  sup- 
plication for  the  death  of  Arius,  and  strangely 
enough  that  very  evening  as  Arius  was  walking 
along  the  streets,  he  was  seized  with  a  sudden 
and  violent  illness,  hastened  into  a  house  and 
died.  Those  familiar  with  Asiatic  crimes  of  the 
period  have  never  doubted  that  he  was  poisoned, 
and  one  historian  saya  "the  difference  is  little 
between  praying  for  the  death  of  a  man  and 
compassing  it." 

Before  and  during  the  reign  of  Constantine, 
the  Church  gave  a  dramatic  imitation  of  the 


CHRISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS       75 

bloody  struggle  between  co-reigning  Emperors 
for  supremacy,  in  the  fierce  encounters  between 
the  bishops  of  Alexandria,  Rome,  and  Constan- 
tinople, each  seeking  to  be  supreme  authority  in 
the  Church.     It  was  the  common  custom  for 
churchmen,    seeking   places    of    power   in   the 
church,  to  maintain  bodies  of  supporters  drawn 
chiefly  from  the  rabble  of  the  streets,  and  be- 
tween these  bloody  battles  were  often  fought. 
Macedonius,  the  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  passed 
over  the  slaughtered  bodies  of  three  thousand 
people  to  take  possession  of  his  episcopal  throne. 
The  Bishopric  of  Rome  was  often  bitterly  fought 
for  because  the  prodigal  gifts  of  the  rich  Roman 
ladies  made  it  a  luxurious  possession.     At  the 
election  of  Damasus,  a  hundred  and  thirty  of  the 
slain  lay  in  the  basilica  of  Cisinnius;  the  con- 
spirators had  called  in  the  aid  of  a  rabble  of 
gladiators,  charioteers,  and  other  ruffians,  and 
the  riot  had  to  be  ended  by  the  intervention  of 
the  Imperial  troops.    When  the  bishops  met  to 
discuss  questions  of  Church  doctrine,  they  often 
had   crowds   of  bathmen  outside   armed   with 
bludgeons  to  save  a  lost  argument  by  the  test  of 
battle. 

From  the  time  Christianity  assumed  the  pur- 
ple in  the  time  of  Constantine,  the  Emperors  be- 
gan to  feel  that  the  Christian  religion  was  not 


76      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

content  to  be  a  servant  of  the  state,  but  that  its 
official  heads  sought  to  be  rivals  of  the  Em- 
perors and  would  not  hesitate  to  be  their  mas- 
ters. Athanasius,  the  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  who 
belonged  to  the  orthodox  party,  when  the  Em- 
peror Constantius,  Constantine 's  son  and  suc- 
cessor, was  on  the  side  of  the  Arians,  openly  de- 
fied the  Emperor  and  challenged  his  authority. 
Here  was  forged  a  weapon  which  was  used  by 
the  Popes  with  terrible  results  in  the  succeed- 
ing centuries.  This  was  the  power  of  the  Church 
to  absolve  the  subjects  of  an  imperial  ruler  from 
his  claim  to  their  allegiance,  on  the  ground  that 
first  obedience  must  be  rendered  to  the  divine 
power,  which  was  able  to  punish  their  souls  and 
which  took  precedence  of  the  imperial  power, 
which  was  only  able  to  punish  with  death  and 
the  seizure  of  goods. 

During  this  rivalry,  the  bishops  indicated  to 
the  civil  rulers  such  heretics  as  they  wished  to 
have  punished,  and  the  rulers  were  made  to  feel 
that  if  the  wishes  of  the  ecclesiastics  were  not 
observed  dire  results  might  follow.  Even  Con- 
stantine was  made  to  feel  this  pressure  to  the 
point  of  causing  the  death  of  his  old  friend, 
Sopater  the  philosopher.  Sopater  was  accused 
by  the  superstitious  Christians  of  binding  the 
winds  in  an  adverse  quarter  by  the  influence  of 


CHRISTIANS  AND  EMPERORS        77 

magic  so  that  the  corn  ships  could  not  reach 
Constantinople.  The  Emperor  was  obliged  to 
give  orders  for  his  decapitation  in  order  to  sat- 
isfy the  Christian  mob  in  the  theater. 

The  grand  historic  struggle  between  religion, 
as  represented  by  Christianity,  and  science, 
where  it  had  reached  its  highest  expression  in 
Alexandria,  was  connected  with  the  reign  of  the 
Emperor  Theodosius,  the  Spaniard,  who  wore 
the  purple  toward  the  close  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury. Theodosius  was  one  of  the  most  ardent 
Christians  who  ever  held  the  Roman  scepter.  He 
was  determined  upon  the  extirpation  of  all  anti- 
Christian  ideas  and  the  supremacy  of  official 
religion.  It  was  largely  because  of  the  services 
he  rendered  in  this  field  that  he  came  to  be 
known  as  Theodosius,  the  great.  Before  noting 
the  consequences  of  his  policy  in  Alexandria,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  resume  the  narrative  of  the 
preceding  chapter. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  ALEXANDRIA  TRAGEDY 

DURING  a  battle  fought  in  Alexandria 
between  Julius  Caesar  and  the  last  of 
the  Ptolemies,  the  great  library  in  the 
Museum  caught  fire,  but  the  daughter  library 
in  the  Serapion  escaped.  When  the  Alexan- 
drian libraries  were  being  formed  by  the  early 
Ptolemaic  kings,  the  king  of  Pergamos  had  set 
about  securing  a  rival  collection.  The  Ptolemies 
replied  to  his  rivalry  by  forbidding  the  exporta- 
tion of  papyrus,  but  the  king  of  Pergamos  suc- 
ceeded in  building  a  library  of  200,000  volumes 
through  the  invention  of  parchment.  Cleopatra, 
the  last  of  the  Ptolemaic  line,  was  disconsolate 
over  the  burning  of  the  library  in  the  Museum 
and  Marc  Antony  to  make  amends  for  the  catas- 
trophe, presented  to  Cleopatra  the  library  of 
Pergamos.  This  probably  made  the  Serapion 
library  about  half  a  million  volumes  and  larger 
than  had  been  the  library  of  the  Museum.  It 
was  now  the  greatest  collection  of  learning  in 
existence  in  the  world. 

The  Serapion,  however,  gave  constant  offense 

to  the  Christian  Archbishop  of  Alexandria,  the 

notorius  and  infamous  Theophilus.     He  hated 

the  Serapion  because  it  was  associated  with  the 

78 


THE  ALEXANDRIA  TRAGEDY       79 

worship  of  the  Egyptian  gods.  This  attitude  of 
Theophilus  was  typical  of  the  attitude  of  the 
Alexandrian  Christiana  jn  general.  Everything 
in  the  Serapion  came  under  their  suspicion.  They 
despised  the  brazen  circles  by  which  Eratos- 
thenes had  measured  the  size  of  the  earth  and 
Timocharis  had  determined  the  motions  of 
Venus.  The  astronomical  instruments  which  had 
been  used  for  forty  years  on  the  terrace  of  the 
Serapion  by  Claudius  Ptolemy  "The  Prince  of 
Astronomers"  meant  nothing  to  the  ignorant 
Theophilus,  all  he  awaited  was  an  opportunity 
to  vent  his  wrath  on  this  magnificent  temple  and 
all  it  contained.  This  opportunity  came  through 
a  bequest  formally  made  by  the  Emperor  Con- 
stantius,  son  of  Constantine,  of  the  site  of  an 
ancient  temple  of  Osiris  for  the  erection  of  a 
Christian  church.  While  digging  the  founda- 
tions they  discovered  the  obscene  symbols  of 
phallic  worship,  and  with  more  zeal  than  mod- 
esty or  discretion,  Theophilus  had  them  exhibit- 
ed to  the  derision  of  the  ignorant  rabble  in  the 
market  place.  The  shocked  and  astounded 
Egyptians  rose  to  avenge  the  insult  to  their 
ancient  faith.  A  riot  ensued,  the  Egyptian  party 
being  led  by  the  philosopher  Olympus.  The 
Egyptians  took  up  their  headquarters  in  the 
Serapion,  from  which  they  sallied  forth  from 


80      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

time  to  time  to  do  battle  with  the  Christians. 
The  dispute  was  finally  referred  for  settlement 
to  the  Emperor.  On  the  arrival  of  the  decision 
of  Theodosius  the  Egyptians  laid  down  their 
arms,  little  expecting  what  that  decision  would 
be.  Theodosius,  who  was  notoriously  ignorant, 
enjoined  that  the  building  should  be  destroyed 
and  entrusted  the  task  to  the  willing  Theophilus. 
He  began  his  labors  with  the  destruction  of  the 
library,  one  of  the  most  sinister  deeds  ever  per- 
formed deliberately  in  all  the  history  of  learn- 
ing. He  did  not  rest  until  the  magnificent 
temple  was  in  hopeless  ruins. 

A  few  years  later  the  Archbishop  Theophilus 
had  died  and  his  position  had  been  taken  by  his 
nephew  Cyril,  who  had  lived  for  five  years 
among  the  monks  of  Nitria.  Cyril  was  the  fash- 
ionable preacher  of  Alexandria  and  had  a  large 
congregation.  His  pagan  critics  asserted  that 
the  clapping  of  hands  at  the  most  eloquent  pass- 
ages of  his  sermons  were  performed  by  persons 
arranged  in  the  congregation  and  paid  for  their 
approval.  From  which  it  appears  that  the 
"claque"  is  not  an  entirely  modern  insti- 
tution. Cyril's  activities  were  not  confined 
to  the  preaching  of  eloquent  and  fashion- 
able sermons.  The  division  of  the  population 
of  the  city  into  Pagans,  Jews,  and  Christians, 


THE  ALEXANDRIA  TEAGEDY       81 

now  that  Greek  toleration  had  disappeared,  re- 
sulted in  constant  bloody  brawls  between  the 
rabble  of  the  various  sections.  In  these  street 
feuds  Cyril  had  more  than  once  been  the  insti- 
gator of  the  Christians.  He  also  set  them  on  to 
mob  and  sack  the  synagogues  and  pillage  the 
houses  of  the  Jews,  and  sought  to  drive  them 
from  the  city.  The  Prefect  Orestes  was  obliged 
to  interfere  to  stop  the  riots,  but  Cyril  was  not 
disposed  to  recognize  the  authority  of  the  Pre- 
fect. His  old  associates,  the  half  wild  Nitrian 
monks,  swarmed  in  from  the  desert  five  hundred 
strong.  One  of  their  leaders,  Ammonius, 
wounded  the  Prefect  in  the  head  with  a  stone. 
The  non-Christian  citizens,  dismayed  by  this  law- 
less performance,  seized  Ammonius  and  had  him 
executed  by  the  lictor.  Cyril  however,  caused 
his  body  to  be  taken  to  the  Caesareum,  laid  in 
state,  buried  with  unusual  honors,  and  cannon- 
ized  as  a  holy  martyr. 

There  was  something  else  in  Alexandria  which 
disturbed  the  complacency  of  the  Archbishop 
Cyril  more  than  the  Pagans  and  Jews.  This  was 
a  beautiful  young  woman,  the  now  celebrated 
Hypatia.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Theon,  the 
mathematician,  and  was  distinguished  as  a  bril- 
liant lecturer  on  the  Neoplatonic  and  Aristotelian 
philosophies.  She  was  also  the  author  of  works 


82      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

in  exposition  of  the  geometry  of  Apollonius  and 
others.  Her  lecture  room  was  crowded  with  an 
audience  more  fashionable  and  wealthy  even 
than  that  of  Cyril.  This  was  a  source  of  con- 
stant bitterness  to  the  Archbishop,  who  not  only 
loathed  her  doctrines  but  resented  her  greater 
success. 

Cyril  decided  to  rid  himself  of  his  rival,  and 
the  "bare-legged,  black-cowled  fiends"  of  the 
Nitrian  desert  were  again  brought  in.  By 
Cyril's  instructions  they  were  ambushed  outside 
the  lecture  room.  What  followed  is  described  by 
Robertson  as  "one  of  the  vilest  episodes  in  the 
whole  history  of  religion."  As  it  is  one  of  the 
most  important  events  in  the  long  struggle  be- 
tween science  and  superstition,  it  is  presented 
here  as  narrated  by  the  celebrated  Roman 
scholar  and  historian,  Gibbon,  in  the  forty-sev- 
enth chapter  of  his  "Decline  and  Fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire." 

"Hypatia,  the  daughter  of  Theon  the  mathe- 
matician, was  initiated  in  her  father's  studies: 
Her  learned  comments  have  elucidated  the  geom- 
etry of  Apollonius  and  Diophantus:  and  she 
publicly  taught,  both  at  Athens  and  Alexandria, 
the  philosophy  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  In  the 
bloom  of  beauty  and  in  the  maturity  of  wisdom, 
the  modest  maid  refused  her  lovers  and  instruct- 


THE  ALEXANDRIA  TRAGEDY       83 

ed  her  disciples ;  the  persons  most  illustrious  for 
their  rank  or  merit  were  impatient  to  visit  the 
female  philosopher ;  and  Cyril  beheld,  with  jeal- 
ous eye  the  gorgeous  train  of  horses  and  slaves 
who  crowded  the  door  of  her  academy. 

"A  rumor  was  spread  among  the  Christians 
that  the  daughter  of  Theon  was  the  only  obstacle 
to  the  reconciliation  of  the  Prefect  and  the  Arch- 
bishop ;  and  that  obstacle  was  speedily  removed. 
On  a  fatal  day,  in  the  holy  season  of  Lent, 
Hypatia  was  torn  from  her  chariot,  stripped 
naked,  dragged  to  the  church  and  inhumanly 
butchered  by  the  hands  of  Peter  the  Reader  and 
a  troop  of  merciless  fanatics;  her  flesh  was 
scraped  from  her  bones  with  sharp  oyster  shells, 
and  her  quivering  limbs  were  delivered  to  the 
flames.  The  just  progress  of  inquiry  and  pun- 
ishment was  stopped  by  seasonable  gifts;  but 
the  murder  of  Hypatia  has  imprinted  an  in- 
delible stain  on  the  character  and  religion  of 
Cyril  of  Alexandria." 

After  the  cowardly  murder  of  Hypatia,  Greek 
learning  lingered  in  scattered  places  for  another 
century.  In  the  third  century,  Porphyry,  the 
celebrated  pupil  of  Plotinus,  had  opened  a  school 
in  Rome  which  had  attained  a  great  reputation 
in  the  teaching  of  astronomy  and  geography  and 
other  sciences.  He  was  the  author  of  a  book 


84      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

which  contradicted  the  Christian  religion  and 
was  replied  to  by  Euscbius  and  St.  Jerome.  The 
most  effective  reply,  however,  was  that  of  the 
Emperor  Theodosius  in  the  fourth  century,  who 
ordered  all  copies  to  be  burned.  The  burning  of 
the  books  containing  Greek  science  and  the  per- 
secution of  any  one  found  owning  such  books 
became  a  steady  Christian  policy,  which  burst 
forth  into  special  action  every  time  a  very  ardent 
Christian  rose  to  power.  The  result  was  that 
men  everywhere  burnt  the  most  precious  vol- 
umes in  their  private  libraries  as  a  measure  of 
self -protection  against  the  Christians. 

A  hundred  years  after  Theodosius  came  a  still 
more  earnest  and  fanatical  Christian  Emperor  in 
Justinian.  Justinian's  anxiety  to  promote  the 
faith  among  unwilling  heathen  resulted  in  seven- 
ty thousand  forced  baptisms  in  Asia  Minor 
alone,  and  his  determination  to  stamp  out  heresy 
brought  on  a  bloody  war  with  the  Phrygians. 
His  most  notorious  act  was  to  give  Greek  philoso- 
phy and  science  the  final  death  wound,  by  order- 
ing the  closing  of  the  schools  in  Athens  A.  D. 
529.  When  this  order  was  enforced,  the  last 
representatives  of  Greek  learning,  Damasius, 
Simplisms,  and  Isadoras,  who  had  been  profes- 
sors in  the  schools  now  closed,  went  as  exiles  to 
Persia.  They  returned  when  Chosroes,  the  Em- 


THE  ALEXANDRIA  TRAGEDY       85 

peror  of  Persia,  made  his  treaty  of  peace  with 
the  Romans,  in  which  he  stipulated  safety  and 
toleration  for  the  exiled  Greek  philosophers. 
They  returned  to  find  however  that  Greek  learn- 
ing had  been  martyred  and  the  Christian  faith 
had  been  crowned  in  its  place.  Then  came  to  a 
close  a  thousand  years  of  Greek  intellectual  de- 
velopment which  will  illuminate  the  pages  of 
history  to  the  end  of  time.  Thanks  to  Chris- 
tianity, it  was  followed  by  a  thousand  years  of 
intellectual  darkness,  which  will  be  known  as  the 
Dark  Ages  as  long  as  history  continues  to  be 
written. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  the  history  of  the 
struggle  between  science  and  superstition  from 
the  days  of  Thales  to  the  deeds  of  Justinian  with- 
out arriving  at  the  conclusion  reached  by  one  of 
America's  first  scholars,  the  dean  of  American 
sociologists,  Lester  F.  Ward,  that  "  Christianity 
proscribed  philosophy,  abolished  the  schools,  and 
plunged  the  world  into  an  abyss  of  darkness 
from  which  it  only  emerged  after  twelve  hun- 
dred years.  Ignorant  of  what  would  have  hap- 
pened if  this  had  not  happened,  nothing  is  left 
but  to  regard  the  advent  of  Christianity  as  a 
calamity." 

As  it  will  be  impossible  in  this  small  volume 
to  consider  at  length  the  developments  of  the 


86      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Dark  Ages,  which  were  dark  largely  because  of 
the  triumphs  of  Christianity  in  Europe,  we  will 
briefly  trace  the  chief  outlines.  Until  quite  re- 
cently, it  was  the  fashion  to  quote  the  Christian 
Fathers,  but  modern  examination  of  their  writ- 
ings has  put  this  out  of  vogue  by  showing  that 
no  enlightenment,  human  or  divine,  raised  them 
above  the  dense  ignorance  of  their  time;  an 
ignorance  for  which  they  themselves  were  in  no 
slight  degree  responsible.  Their  attitude  toward 
science  is  depicted  by  St.  Augustine,  the  Bishop 
of  Hippo,  who  contended  that  it  was  useless  to 
study  the  structure  of  the  universe,  as  the  scrip- 
tures said  there  was  soon  to  be  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth. 

With  the  capture  of  Alexandria  by  Omar  in 
the  seventh  century,  the  Arabians  came  in  con- 
tact with  such  Greek  books  as  had  escaped  de- 
struction by  the  Christians,  and  throughout  the 
succeeding  centuries  the  torch  of  science  was 
kept  burning  by  the  Saracens.  It  was  the  re- 
newal of  contact  between  Arabia  and  Europe,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Moors  in  Spain,  which  revived 
the  sacred  flame  in  Europe.  The  works  of  the 
Alexandrian  astronomers  and  mathematicians, 
which  had  been  translated  into  Arabic,  were  to- 
ward the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  translated 
from  the  Arabic  into  the  European  languages. 


THE  ALEXANDRIA  TRAGEDY       87 

The  great  work  of  Copernicus  "De  Revolutioni- 
bus, ' '  which  is  the  foundation  of  modern  astron- 
omy shows  the  germination  of  modern  knowledge 
from  seeds  originally  planted  by  the  Greeks. 

Copernicus  had  great  difficulty  in  securing  the 
publication  of  his  book  and  did  not  dare  attempt 
it  in  Catholic  countries.  Even  in  Protestant 
countries  the  opposition  to  the  new  ideas  was 
bitter.  In  order  to  escape  as  far  as  possible  the 
notice  and  opposition  of  Protestant  leaders  at 
Wittenberg,  a  natural  center  of  publication,  it 
was  intrusted  to  the  publisher  Osiander  at 
Nuremberg,  but  Osiander  knew  the  danger  and 
his  courage  failed  him.  Copernicus  died  without 
seeing  his  book  completed  and  never  knew  of  the 
treachery  of  Osiander  in  the  insertion  of  a 
crawling  preface  by  himself,  but  supposed  for 
some  time  to  be  by  the  author,  in  which  it  was 
declared  that  the  teachings  of  the  book  were 
merely  intended  as  indulgences  of  the  imagina- 
tion. For  many  years  this  historic  work  of  the 
Canon  of  Frauenberg  passed  almost  unnoticed, 
except  for  a  small  group  of  scholars  who  per- 
ceived its  importance,  only  to  become  a  standard 
of  battle  raised  by  the  noted  Bruno  and  the  no 
less  illustrious  Galileo. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BRUNO    THE    WANDERER 

BRUNO  was  born  at  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century— 1548— in  the  township 
of  Nola,  near  Naples.    His  father,  Gio- 
vanni, was  a  soldier  and,  probably  as  a  compli- 
ment to  King  Philip  of  Spain,  who  then  ruled 
the  Kingdom  of  Naples,  Bruno  was  named  Filip- 
po.    The  name  which  he  made  famous  in  history, 
Giordano,  was  assumed  according  to  custom  when 
he  entered  the  religious  order  of  the  Dominicans. 
An  example  of  the  impressions  which  religion 
made  on  Bruno's  mind  in  his  boyhood  may  be 
found  in  the  story  he  told  in  later  life  which  has 
its  scene  in  a  neighboring  village.    Bruno  tells 
how  Scipio  Savolino  used  to  confess  his  sins  once 
a  year  on  Holy  Friday  to  the  Cure,  Don  Paulino, 
who  in  addition  to  being  his  father  confessor  on 
one  day  of  the  year,  was  his  boon  companion  on 
every  other  day.    Although  Scipio  acknowledged 
that  his  sins  "were  many  and  great"  his  old 
companion,  the  Cure,  had  no  difficulty  in  absolv- 
ing him.    One  performance  of  the  ceremony  was 
enough  and  in  succeeding  years  Scipio  would 
say  to  Don  Paulino,  "Father  Mine,  the  sins  of 
a  year  ago  today,  you  know  them;"  and  Don 
Paulino  would  reply,  "Son,  thou  knowest  the  ab- 
88 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  89 

solution  of  a  year  ago  today — go  in  peace  and 
sin  no  more ! ' '  This  story  reflects  the  temper  of 
the  Church,  which  was  rigid  in  the  matter  of  be- 
lief and  notoriously  lax  on  the  question  of 
morals.  This  laxity  of  the  Church  was  one  of 
the  important  contributory  factors  to  the  Luth- 
eran Reformation. 

In  his  early  youth  Bruno  had  a  striking  lesson 
in  that  deceptiveness  of  appearances  which  was 
responsible  for  so  many  mistakes  about  the  origin 
and  structure  of  the  universe.  From  his  home 
lie  could  see  Mount  Vesuvius;  it  looked  dark, 
barren,  rugged,  and  repellant,  and  he  had  this 
idea  of  it  for  many  years.  When  he  grew  old 
enough  to  visit  it,  he  found  its  slopes  to  be  a 
perfect  garden,  rich  in  forms  and  colors,  while 
now  it  was  the  slopes  of  his  own  garden-decked 
hill  which  looked  barren  and  gloomy  in  the  dis- 
tance. This  incident  greatly  impressed  Bruno 
and  probably  helped  him  to  discard  current 
theories  about  the  universe  based  on  what  is 
seen,  and  to  accept  the  Copernican  explanation, 
which  contradicts  all  appearances. 

To  criticise  Bruno  for  entering  the  Church 
would  be  to  display  a  lack  of  historical  sense. 
In  the  sixteenth  century  in  Italy,  the  Church 
presented  almost  the  only  opportunity  for  a 
career,  especially  to  one  who  was  studious  but 


90       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

not  rich.  He  had  an  opportunity  to  see  the 
Church  at  its  worst,  as  he  joined  the  Dominican 
Order,  which  was  the  narrowest  and  most  bigoted 
and  had  control  of  the  Inquisition.  At  this  time 
the  doings  of  the  Inquisition  had  become  un- 
bearable, resulting  in  riots,  two  of  whose  ring- 
leaders were  beheaded.  The  Waldenses  were  be- 
ing subjected  to  a  persecution  by  the  Church, 
which  was  then  at  the  zenith  of  its  brutality. 
This  was  a  sect  which  had  risen  in  the  south  of 
France,  as  disciples  of  Peter  Waldo.  Their 
preacher  explained  the  scriptures  and  urged  men 
to  holy  lives,  which  was  regarded  by  the  mother 
Church  as  an  important  usurpation  of  ecclesias- 
tical functions.  The  Waldenses  protested 
against  indulgences,  which  they  said  had  nearly 
abolished  prayer,  fasting,  and  alms.  They  also 
protested  against  prayers  for  the  dead,  assert- 
ing that  their  souls  had  already  gone  either  to 
heaven  or  to  hell.  When  Bruno  was  thirteen 
years  old,  in  one  single  day  the  Church  butchered 
eighty-eight  Waldenses  with  the  same  knife, 
their  bodies  being  quartered  and  scattered  along 
the  road  to  Calabria.  This  was  the  period  when 
the  Catholic  Church  was  taking  the  steps  which 
it  considered  necessary  as  a  result  of  the  Luth- 
eran Reformation  of  half  a  century  earlier. 
These  measures  consisted  in  the  institution  of 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  91 

the  Order  of  the  Jesuits,  the  establishment  of  the 
Inquisition,  and  the  censorship  of  the  press  by 
means  of  the  Index  of  forbidden  books.  At  the 
Council  of  Trent  it  was  decided  that  the  Order 
of  Jesus,  founded  by  Loyola  in  order  to  prevent 
further  developments  of  the  Lutheran  type,  was 
to  set  itself  "to  erase  with  fire  and  sword  the 
least  traces  of  heresy."  Little  did  Bruno  rea- 
lize what  this  decision  would  mean  for  him. 
The  signs  of  the  coming  heretic  were  evident 
in  Bruno  even  during  his  novitiate.  Written 
charges  were  drawn  up  against  him  for  giving 
away  some  images  of  the  saints  which  should 
have  been  carefully  kept.  As  the  monks  were 
forbidden  to  study  serious  works,  which  might 
lead  to  heretical  opinions,  their  minds  were  dis- 
tracted and  amused  by  foolish  books  which  were 
highly  recommended  by  the  ecclesiastical  au- 
thorities. One  of  these  was  called  the  "Seven 
Delights  of  the  Madonna."  This  book  Bruno 
advised  the  monks  to  throw  aside  and  to  devote 
their  attention  to  the  best  of  the  books  they  were 
allowed  to  read,  especially  recommending  the 
"Lives  of  the  Fathers."  The  first  charges  were 
torn  up  by  the  Prior,  but  later  more  serious  ac- 
cusations of  having  spoken  favorably  of  the 
Arian  heresy  in  a  private  conversation  convinced 
him  that  he  was  in  danger,  and  while  the  process 


92       SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

was  pending,  he  fled  from  Naples  and  went  to 
Rome. 

While  Bruno  was  in  Rome  staying  in  the  clois- 
ter of  Minerva,  news  reached  him  that  steps  were 
being  taken  to  begin  a  third  action  against  him 
at  Rome  itself.  This  action  was  to  be  composed 
of  thirty  articles,  the  principal  evidence  against 
him  being  the  discovery  of  a  certain  heretical 
book  which  he  supposed  he  had  safely  disposed 
of  before  leaving  Naples.  As  this  threatened  to 
be  serious,  he  decided  to  flee  from  Rome. 

Bruno  was  now  twenty-eight  years  of  age  and 
his  flight  from  Rome  marks  the  beginning  of  six- 
teen years  of  constant  wandering  through 
Europe.  This  method  of  living  seems  to  have 
been  greatly  facilitated  by  the  customs  of  the 
period.  The  wandering  scholar  seems  to  have 
been  a  usual  figure  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
Bruno  selected  the  cities  he  visited  from  two 
principal  consideration:  first,  whether  they  con- 
tained universities  at  which  he  might  lecture; 
and,  second,  whether  they  had  printing  estab- 
lishments where  he  might  produce  his  books. 
When  Bruno  entered  a  university  town,  he  ap- 
pears to  have  gone  directly  to  the  university  and 
sought  employment  as  a  specialist  in  the  art  of 
training  the  memory.  As  the  preaching  of  long 
sermons  was  one  of  the  principal  public  func- 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  93 

tions  of  the  time  and  congregations  objected, 
then  as  now,  to  reading  from  manuscript,  ability 
to  memorize  had  great  value  and  was  greatly 
sought  in  the  universities.  Bruno  had  obtained 
his  system  from  a  close  study  of  the  works  of 
Raymond  Lully,  who  had  a  great  reputation  as 
a  writer  on  the  memory.  Whether  Bruno's  sys- 
tem had  any  special  merit,  we  have  no  means 
of  knowing,  but  it  certainly  did  not  deserve  the 
name  of  science  which  he  gave  it.  It  is  quite 
probable  that  Bruno  himself  valued  it  chiefly 
as  a  means  of  securing  quick  employment, 
much  as  Kepler  published  his  astrological  al- 
manac in  which  he  did  not  believe,  and  used 
the  proceeds  of  its  sale  to  devote  his  time  to 
the  study  of  astronomy.  It  appears  that  when 
Bruno  found  himself  settled  in  a  university 
and  began  to  feel  his  position  secure,  he  also 
began  to  express  his  real  opinions,  which  were 
in  violent  contradiction  to  those  of  his  col- 
leagues. 

The  bitter  conflicts  which  invariably  arose 
between  Bruno  and  the  other  teachers  in  the 
universities  usually  had  their  origin  in  the  criti- 
cism of  Aristotelian  philosophy.  All  through 
this  period  Aristotle  had  an  authority  second 
only  to  the  scriptures.  It  must  be  remembered, 
however,  that  Aristotle,  as  taught  in  the  univer- 


94      SCIENCE  AND  SUPEKSTITION 

sities  and  sustained  by  the  Church  as  being  al- 
most a  part  of  the  divine  revelation,  was  not 
Aristotle  as  known  to  the  Greeks  or  to  the 
moderns.  The  uses  which  were  made  of  the 
writings  of  Aristotle  to  sustain  the  dogmas  of 
the  medieval  Church  would  have  greatly 
amazed  the  peripatetic  philosopher  himself. 
The  idea  that  his  works  contained  the  sum  of 
all  human  knowledge  and  that  his  opinions 
should  be  binding  on  the  human  race  to  the  end 
of  time  had  never  occurred  to  him,  and  had 
such  a  notion  been  expressed  to  him  it  would 
undoubtedly  have  provoked  his  fierce  denunci- 
ation. The  bogus  Aristotle  of  the  mediaeval 
Church  was  the  creation  of  the  astute,  thir- 
teenth century  theologian,  Thomas  Aquinas, 
known  as  the  "divine"  Thomas.  Aristotle 
had  been  considered  the  chief  bulwark 
of  infidelity;  after  the  transformation,  the 
contradiction  of  his  opinions  was  fraught 
with  danger  of  capital  punishment.  Al- 
though Bruno  did  much  to  shake  the 
authority  of  the  Stagirite,  it  remained 
long  in  vogue.  In  Paris  in  1624,  twenty- 
four  years  after  Bruno 's  death,  the  theologians 
induced  parliament  to  issue  a  decree  against 
all  who  publicly  opposed  Aristotle.  Five  years 
after  the  same  parliament,  urged  by  the  theo- 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  95 

logical  department  of  the  University  of  Paris 
— the  Sorbonne — decreed  that  an  attack  on 
Aristotle  should  be  considered  and  dealt  with 
as  an  attack  on  the  Church. 

The  strength  of  Aristotle  as  an  authority  in 
the  universities  is  well  illustrated  in  the  story 
told  by  George  Henry  Lewes,  who  considers 
Bruno  a  figure  in  the  history  of  philosophy. 
"A  young  student  thought  he  observed  spots 
on  the  sun  and  related  the  incident  to  a  priest, 
by  whom  he  was  counseled  as  follows :  'My  son, 
I  have  read  Aristotle  many  times  and  I  assure 
you  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind  mentioned  by 
him.  Go  rest  in  peace,  and  be  certain  that  the 
spots  you  have  seen  are  in  your  eyes  and  not 
in  the  sun.'  " 

In  the  intervals  in  which  Bruno  was  not  en- 
gaged in  writing  or  in  teaching  in  the  univer- 
sities, he  managed  to  make  a  scant  livelihood  as 
private  tutor.  He  sometimes  worked  as  jour- 
neyman printer,  being  a  skilful  typesetter.  He 
visited  so  many  towns  and  cities  during  his 
wanderings  that  a  mere  catalogue  of  them 
would  be  confusing.  In  this  narrative  only  the 
principal  places  will  be  given.  The  first  town 
he  visited  was  Noli,  on  the  Gulf  of  Genoa,  which 
also  served  as  a  refuge  for  Dante  when  in  exile. 
He  taught  grammar  to  boys  and  astronomy  and 


96      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

cosmography  to  a  group  of  gentlemen.  After 
a  stay  of  four  or  five  months,  he  went  to  Savona, 
to  Turin,  and  finally  to  Venice.  Here  he  spent 
six  weeks  trying  to  find  employment,  but  the 
principal  offices  and  schools  were  closed  on  ac- 
count of  the  plague  which  was  destroying  the 
inhabitants  of  the  town.  He  managed,  how- 
ever, to  get  out  his  first  book,  which  has  not 
been  preserved,  entitled  "Signs  of  the  Times." 
This  book  was  probably — to  borrow  a  simile 
from  the  artists — a  pot  boiler,  intended  to  en- 
able its  author  to  make  a  small  sum  for  im- 
mediate necessities.  It  was  followed  by  another 
work,  "The  Ark  of  Noah." 

"The  Ark  of  Noah"  was  one  of  several  sat- 
ires which  Bruno  wrote  and  published  from 
time  to  time,  with  a  daring  which  amazed  his 
more  timid  contemporaries.  The  book  repre- 
sented the  animals  assembled  to  settle  a  dis- 
pute about  rank.  The  ass  was  in  great  danger 
of  losing  his  pre-eminent  position  in  the  poop 
of  the  ark  because  his  power  was  in  his  hoofs 
rather  than  in  his  head.  It  is  quite  probable 
that  the  readers  of  the  book  interpreted  the 
ass  to  be  the  representative  of  the  monks,  and 
it  is  said  that  one  of  the  popes  considered  the 
sarcasm  as  aimed  at  himself.  Asininity  was 
Bruno's  favorite  epithet  for  the  expression  of 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  97 

his  contempt  for  the  ignorance  and  stupidity 
of  the  monks. 

''From  Venice,"  Bruno  tells  us,  "I  went  to 
Padua,  where  I  found  some  fathers  of  the  or- 
der of  St.  Dominic,  whom  I  knew;  they  per- 
suaded me  to  resume  the  habit,  even  though  I 
should  not  wish  to  return  to  the  order,  as  it 
was  more  convenient  for  travel :  with  this  idea 
I  went  to  Bergamo,  and  had  a  robe  made  of 
cheap  white  cloth,  placing  it  over  the  scapular 
which  I  had  kept  when  I  left  Rome."  As  he 
was  traveling  from  Bergamo  to  Lyons,  he  was 
warned  that  he  would  meet  scant  sympathy  at 
the  latter  place  and  turned  his  face  in  the  di- 
rection of  Geneva,  which  at  that  time  was  the 
home  of  exiles  of  all  nations,  and  especially  of 
Italians.  In  the  book  of  the  Rector  of  the 
Academy  at  Geneva  for  the  year  1579,  under 
the  date  of  May  22,  is  the  name  Philippus 
Brunus,  written  in  his  own  hand.  As  there  has 
been  considerable  discussion  as  to  whether  or 
not  Bruno  accepted  the  religion  of  Calvin  dur- 
ing his  stay  in  Geneva,  the  following  state- 
ment, made  by  himself  before  the  Court  of 
Venice  when  he  was  on  trial  in  that  city  and 
found  in  Document  9,  seems  to  be  decisive. 
When  he  arrived  in  Geneva,  he  was  called  upon 
by  a  distinguished  exile  and  reformer,  the 


98      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Marquis  of  Vico,  a  Neapolitan.  The  statement 
to  the  Court  relates  to  his  conversation  with 
the  Marquis : 

"He  asked  me  who  I  was,  and  whether  I 
come  to  stay  there  and  to  profess  the  religion 
of  the  city,  to  which,  after  I  had  given  an  ac- 
count of  myself  and  of  my  reasons  for  abandon- 
ing the  Order,  I  said  that  I  had  no  intention 
of  professing  the  religion  of  the  city,  not  know- 
ing what  it  was,  and  that  therefore  I  wished 
rather  to  remain  living  in  freedom  and  secur- 
ity, than  in  any  other  manner.     I  was  per- 
suaded, in  any  case,  to  lay  aside  the  habit  ] 
wore ;  so  I  had  made  for  myself  from  the  cloth 
a  pair  of  trews  and  other  things,  while  the 
Marquis  himself,  with  other  Italians,  gave  me 
a  sword,  hat,  cape,  and  other  necessaries  of 
clothing,  and  enabled  me  to  support  myself  so 
far  by  correcting  proofs.    I  stayed  about  two 
months,  and  attended  at  times  the  preachings 
and  discussions,  both  of  Italians  and  French- 
men who  lectured  and  preached  in  the  city; 
among  others,  I  heard  several  times  Nicolo  Bal- 
bani  of  Lucca,  who  read  on  the  epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  and  preached  the  Gospels;  but  having 
been  told  that  I  could  not  remain  there  long 
if  I  did  not  make  up  my  mind  to  adopt  the  re- 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  99 

ligion  of  the  city,  for  if  not  I  should  receive 
no  assistance,  I  resolved  to  leave. ' ' 

Documents  published  by  Dufour  in  1884, 
dealing  with  Bruno's  stay  in  Geneva,  prove 
conclusively  that  he  had  additional  reasons  for 
leaving  Geneva.  The  chief  of  these  was  a  con- 
troversy which  arose  between  himself  and  De 
La  Faye,  who  was  then  professor  of  philosophy 
in  the  Academy.  Bruno  caused  to  be  printed 
a  reply  to  De  La  Faye  in  which  he  enumerated 
twenty  errors  made  by  the  professor  in  one  of 
his  lectures.  As  the  professor  was  almost  all 
powerful  with  the  authorities  of  the  city,  life 
in  Geneva  was  made  extremely  unpleasant  for 
Bruno,  though  he  probably  had  the  best  of  the 
controversy  so  far  as  merits  were  concerned. 
The  power  of  the  Church  was  invoked  against 
him  and  he  left  Geneva  with  an  impression, 
which  he  never  changed,  that  narrow  and 
bigoted  as  were  the  Lutheran  Protestants,  they 
were  less  so  than  the  Calvinists.  On  the  whole, 
Bruno  escaped  rather  easily  from  the  city  in 
which  Calvin  only  twenty-six  years  before  had 
burned  its  ablest  scientific  man,  Michael  Ser- 
vetus,  because  of  his  disagreement  with  the 
doctrine  of  the  trinity. 

From  Geneva,  he  went  to  Lyons,  where  he 
found  it  impossible    to    make    a    living,    and 


100     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

passed  on  to  Toulouse,  which  boasted  one  of 
the  most  flourishing  universities  of  the  period. 
While  Bruno  was  conducting  private  classes,  a 
chair  of  the  university  fell  vacant  and  he  was 
allowed  to  compete  for  it.  He  took  a  doctor's 
degree  in  theology  and  secured  the  chair  by 
the  free  election  of  students.  Here  he  remained 
for  two  years,  lecturing  on  the  teachings  of 
Aristotle  and  here,  as  almost  everywhere,  his 
departure  was  brought  about  by  opinions 
which  he  expressed  in  conversations  and  dis- 
cussions. Toulouse  was  a  bad  city  for  heretics, 
as  was  demonstrated  thirty-five  years  later  by 
the  burning  of  Vanini. 

In  the  latter  part  of  1581,  Bruno  set  foot  in 
the  streets  of  Paris,  still  slippery  with  the 
blood  of  the  Eve  of  St.  Bartholomew.  Here  he 
delivered  a  course  of  thirty  lectures  on  the 
"thirty  divine  attributes,"  which  brought  him 
an  offer  of  a  professorship.  This,  however,  he 
could  not  accept,  as  it  required  that  he  attend 
mass,  which  he  refused  to  do.  His  fame  had 
reached  the  ears  of  Henry  III,  who  was  then 
very  much  interested  in  philosophy  and  who 
desired  to  satisfy  himself  as  to  whether  Bruno 's 
art  of  memory  was  a  natural  process  or  based 
on  magic.  Bruno  proved  to  him  that  a  pow- 
erful memory  was  a  purely  natural  product. 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  101 

While  in  Paris  on  this  first  visit,  he  published 
many  books,  one  on  the  "Art  of  Memory,"  be- 
ing dedicated  to  the  King.  Brunnhofer  speak- 
ing of  the  art  of  memory  taught  by  Bruno, 
says,  "The  art  was  a  convenient  means  of  in- 
troducing Bruno  to  strange  universities,  gain- 
ing him  favor  with  the  great,  or  helping  him 
out  of  pressing  money  troubles.  It  was  his 
exoteric  philosophy,  with  which  he  could 
carefully  drape  his  philosophy  of  religion  hos- 
tile to  the  Church,  and  ride  as  hobby  horse  in 
his  unfruitful  humours."  His  Parisian  writ- 
ings reveal  him  as  an  ardent  disciple  of  Co- 
pernicus, which  also  brought  him  into  conflict 
with  the  accepted  authorities.  His  lectures  in 
Paris  were  highly  successful  and  Nostitz,  who 
was  one  of  his  pupils,  wrote  thirty-three  years 
later:  "He  was  able  to  discourse  impromptu 
on  any  subject  suggested,  to  speak  without 
preparation  extensively  and  eloquently,  and  he 
attracted  many  pupils  and  admirers  in  Paris." 
By  1583,  however,  he  had  come  into  conflict 
with  conventional  opinion  and  found  it  desir- 
able to  seek  the  wider  tolerance  of  London. 

England  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth  was  a 
refuge  to  the  religious  exiles  of  many  nations, 
and  Italians  were  especially  welcome.  Eliza- 
beth had  two  Italian  physicians  and  conversed 


102     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

with  them  in  their  own  language.  The  Eliza- 
bethan court  attracted  and  encouraged  masters 
of  literature,  who  have  made  the  period 
famous.  These  were  the  days  of  Shake- 
speare, Spenser,  and  Jonson.  In  the  early 
months  of  1583,  Bruno  was  in  Oxford,  which 
was  the  English  stronghold  of  Aristotelian 
philosophy.  One  of  its  statutes  said  that: 
"  Bachelors  and  Masters  who  did  not  follow 
Aristotle  faithfully  were  liable  to  a  fine  of  five 
shillings  for  every  point  of  divergence,"  and 
the  records  of  the  university  show  that  teach- 
ers had  been  expelled  for  dissenting  from  the 
teachings  of  the  Greek.  Oxford  was  cold  and 
conservative,  a  reputation  which  it  has  never 
since  lost.  It  had  none  of  the  enthusiasm  of 
French  and  Italian  institutions  and  one  can 
well  imagine  the  chill  reception  accorded 
Bruno's  letter  asking  permission  to  lecture 
there,  which  read  as  follows: 

"To  the  most  excellent,  the  Vice-Chancellor 
of  the  University  of  Oxford,  its  most  famous 
Doctors  and  celebrated  Masters — Salutation 
from  Philotheus  Jordanus  Brunus  of  Nola, 
Doctor  of  a  more  scientific  theology,  professor 
of  a  purer  and  less  harmful  learning,  known  in 
the  chief  universities  of  Europe,  a  philosopher 
approved  and  honourably  received,  a  stranger 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER          103 

with  none  but  the  uncivilised  and  ignoble,  a 
wakener  of  sleeping  minds,  tamer  of  presump- 
tions and  obstinate  ignorance,  who  in  all  re- 
spects professes  a  general  love  of  man,  and 
cares  not  for  the  Italian  more  than  for  the 
Briton,  male  more  than  female,  the  mitre  more 
than  the  crown,  the  toga  more  than  the  coat 
of  mail,  the  cowled  more  than  the  uncowled; 
but  loves  him  who  in  intercourse  is  the  more 
peaceable,  friendly  and  useful,  whom  only 
propagators  of  folly  and  hypocrites  detest, 
whom  the  honourable  and  studious  love,  whom 
noble  minds  applaud.  If  this  writing  appears 
to  conflict  with  the  common  and  approved 
faith,  understand  that  it  is  put  forward  by 
me  not  as  absolutely  true,  but  as  more  con- 
sonant with  our  senses  and  our  reason,  or  at 
least  less  dissonant  than  the  other  side  of  the 
antithesis.  And  remember,  that  we  are  not  so 
much  eager  to  show  our  own  knowledge,  as 
moved  by  the  desire  of  showing  the  weakness 
of  the  common  philosophy,  which  thrusts  for- 
ward what  is  mere  opinion  as  if  demonstrably 
proved,  and  of  making  it  clear  by  our  dis- 
cussion (if  the  gods  grant  it)  how  much  in 
harmony  with  regulated  sense,  in  consonance 
with  the  truth  of  the  substance  of  things,  is 


104     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

that  which  the  garrulous  multitude  of  plebeian 
philosophers  ridicule  as  foreign  to  sense." 

Nevertheless  Bruno  lectured  in  Oxford  and 
when  the  Polish  prince,  Alasco,  was  enter- 
tained by  the  faculty  at  a  tournament  of  dis- 
putations, Bruno  was  one  of  the  disputants. 
The  Prince  declares  that  "these  learned  op- 
ponents, respondents,  and  moderators,  ac- 
quitted themselves  like  themselves,  sharplie 
and  soundlie."  Bruno  was  evidently  well 
pleased  with  his  part  in  the  proceedings,  de- 
claring that  the  representative  put  forward  by 
the  University  could  not  meet  his  arguments 
and  was  left  fifteen  times  "like  a  hen  in  the 
stubble"  and  resorted  to  incivility  and  abuse. 
It  is  evident  that  Bruno  cited  Copernicus  in 
the  debate,  for  he  says:  "The  dispute  grew 
envenomed.  My  antagonists  took  refuge  in 
sarcasms  and  insults.  One,  seizing  pen  and 
paper,  cried:  'Look,  be  silent  and  learn;  I 
will  teach  you  Ptolemy  and  Copernicus ! '  But 
as  soon  as  he  began  to  sketch  the  spheres,  it 
was  clear  he  had  never  opened  Copernicus." 
This  discussion  seems  to  have  had  the  usual 
result  of  getting  Bruno  into  trouble  and  he 
departed  in  the  same  month  for  London.  His 
most  stinging  blow  at  Oxford  was  his  charac- 
terization of  it  as  "the  widow  of  true  learning." 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER  105 

During  his  stay  in  London,  he  found  a  quiet 
haven  in  the  French  Embassy.  The  French 
Ambassador,  Mauvissiere,  befriended  him 
against  all  attacks,  and  Bruno's  gratitude  ap- 
pears in  his  dedication  of  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  many  books  he  produced  during 
his  London  sojourn:  "I,  for  the  great  favors 
enjoyed  from  you,  food  and  shelter,  freedom, 
safety,  harbourage,  who  through  you  have  es- 
caped so  terrible  and  fierce  a  storm,  to  you 
consecrate  this  anchor,  these  shrouds  and 
slackened  sails,  this  so  dear  to  me,  more 
precious  still  to  the  future  world,  to  the  end 
that  through  your  favour  they  may  not  fall  a 
prey  to  the  ocean  of  injustice,  turbulence,  and 
hostility." 

To  the  Venetian  court  inquiry  he  ex- 
plained that  he  was  the  Ambassador's  "gen- 
tleman," but  it  seems  he  was  also  his  secre- 
tary, and  as  such  accompanied  him  to  Eliza- 
beth's court,  where  he  was  graciously  received 
by  the  English  Queen.  One  of  the  many  counts 
against  him  at  Venice,  was  the  admiration  for 
England's  heretical  Ruler,  which  he  had,  with 
the  customary  fulsomeness,  expressed :  ' '  That 
most  singular  and  rare  of  ladies,  who  from  this 
cold  clime,  near  to  the  Arctic  parallel,  sheds  a 
bright  light  upon  all  the  terrestial  globe.  Eliza- 


106     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

beth,  a  Queen  in  title  and  in  dignity,  inferior 
to  no  King  in  all  the  world.  For  her  judg- 
ment, counsel,  and  government,  not  easily  sec- 
ond to  any  other  that  bears  a  sceptre  in  the 
earth.  In  her  familiarity  with  the  arts,  knowl- 
edge of  the  sciences,  understanding  and  prac- 
tice of  all  languages  spoken  in  Europe  by  the 
people  or  the  learned,  I  leave  the  whole  world  to 
judge  what  rank  she  should  hold  among 
princes."  That  Bruno  was  willing  to  modify 
this  when  on  trial,  appears  from  his  answer  to 
the  charge  of  having  called  Elizabeth  "di- 
vine." "In  my  book  on  'The  Cause,  Principle, 
and  One,'  I  praise  the  Queen  of  England  and 
call  her  'divine,'  not  as  a  term  of  worship,  but 
as  an  epithet  such  as  the  ancients  used  to  ap- 
ply to  their  princes,  and  in  England,  where  I 
then  was,  and  where  I  composed  this  book,  the 
title  'divine'  is  usually  given  to  the  Queen. 
I  was  the  more  inclined  to  call  her  so,  that  she 
knew  me,  as  I  went  continually  with  the  Am- 
bassador to  court ;  but  I  know  I  erred  in  prais- 
ing this  lady,  she  being  a  heretic,  and  in  call- 
ing her  'divine.'  ' 

The  poetic  Italian  found  a  kindred  soul  in 
the  elegant  man  of  letters,  Sir  Phillip  Sidney, 
whom  he  describes  as  ' '  the  most  illustrious  and 
excellent  cavalier,  one  of  the  rarest  and 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER          107 

brightest  spirits  in  the  world."  Of  the  seven 
works  which  came  from  Bruno's  pen  while  in 
England,  the  two  chief  ethical  works  were 
dedicated  to  Sidney.  It  would  be  pleasant  to 
believe  that  the  greatest  Italian  met  the  most 
illustrious  Englishman— Shakespeare— as  some 
have  asserted,  but  the  facts  are  that  Bruno  left 
London  in  1585,  while  Shakespeare  did  not 
come  there  until  1586. 

Among  the  books  he  published  while  in  Eng- 
land was  another  satire  in  the  vein  of  "The 
Ark  of  Noah."    It  was  entitled  "The  Expul- 
sion of  the  Triumphant   Beast."    It   was   an 
allegorical  prose  poem,  in  which  the  repent- 
ant Jupiter  resolved  to  drive  out  the  beasts 
who  occupied  his  heavenly  firmament.     At  a 
council  of  the  gods  there  is  an  illuminating  dis- 
cussion   of    the    history    of   religions.     Such 
"beast"   constellations  as  the  Bear  and  the 
Scorpion,  which  represented  vices,  were  to  be 
expelled  to  make  room  for  virtues.    The  "Tri- 
umphant Beast"  was  generally  understood  to 
mean  the  Pope,  or  the  Church.     Even  more 
mercilessly  satirical  was  "The  Cabala,"  dedi- 
cated to  an  imaginary  Bishop  of  Casamarciano, 
who  is  put  forward  as  the  representative  of 
backwardness,   ignorance,   and  simplicity.    It 
has  his  favorite  theme— the   Asininity   of  the 


108     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Monks  or  the  Church.  Referring  probably  to 
the  last  part  of  it,  he  says:  "The  image  and 
figure  of  the  animal  are  well  known,  many  have 
written  on  it,  we  among  the  rest,  in  a  particu- 
lar fashion;  but  as  it  displeased  the  vulgar, 
and  failed  to  please  the  wise,  for  its  sinister 
meaning,  the  work  was  suppressed." 

Departing  from  London,  probably  in  the 
company  of  the  returning  French  Ambassador, 
Mauvissiere,  Bruno  arrived  in  Paris  in  the  Oc- 
tober of  1585.  He  immediately  sought  to 
ameliorate  the  difficulties  of  his  situation  by 
having  his  excommunication  lifted,  and  being 
admitted  to  the  Church  without  being  com- 
pelled to  return  to  the  priesthood.  The  Papal 
Nuncio,  to  whom  he  appealed,  told  him  noth- 
ing could  be  even  attempted  unless  he  promised 
to  return  to  his  order.  As  Bruno  considered 
this  an  impossible  condition,  the  negotiations 
were  abandoned. 

He  found  his  heretical  opinions  were  in 
great  disfavor  in  Paris,  and  had  no  intention 
of  staying  there,  but  wished  to  do  something 
in  keeping  with  his  doings  on  his  former  visit. 
He  entered  a  public  disputation  to  be  held  in 
the  Royal  Hall  of  the  university.  He  drew  up 
one  hundred  and  twenty  theses  against  the 
Aristotelian  philosophy,  which  was  the  sub- 


BRUNO  THE  WANDERER          109 

stance  of  the  teaching  of  the  Sorbonne.  On  his 
side  he  had  the  more  progressive  college  of 
Cambray,  which  later  became  the  College  of 
France.  Bruno's  chief  attack  in  the  debate, 
was  published  as  "The  Awakener,"  and  indi- 
cates how  great  must  have  been  the  contrast 
between  his  modern  ideas  and  the  medieval  no- 
tions of  his  opponents.  He  showed  them  how 
their  whole  attitude  towards  Aristotle  stood 
condemned  by  the  writings  of  Aristotle  him- 
self, and  held  he  had  the  same  right  to  criti- 
cize the  Greek  philosopher  that  he  had  to 
criticize  his  predecessors.  The  following  are 
examples  of  his  command  of  brilliant  epigram 
in  debate.  Denouncing  authority,  he  said,  "If 
we  are  really  sick,  it  helps  us  nought  that  pub- 
lic opinion  thinks  we  are  really  making  for 
health."  Again  he  said,  "It  is  a  poor  mind 
that  will  think  with  the  multitude  because  it 
is  a  multitude ;  truth  is  not  altered  by  the  opin- 
ions of  the  vulgar,  or  the  confirmation  of  the 
many."  And  to  the  same  effect,  "It  is  more 
blessed  to  be  wise  in  truth  in  face  of  opinion 
than  to  be  wise  in  opinion  in  face  of  truth." 
Turning  from  France  to  Protestant  Germany, 
where  he  called  at  several  cities,  he  had  an 
interesting  experience  at  Marburg.  On  the  roll 
of  the  matriculated  students  of  the  university, 


110     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

under  the  date  of  July  25,  1586,  is  Bruno's 
name,  accompanied  with  the  following  note  by 
the  Rector:  "When  the  right  of  publicly 
teaching  philosophy  was  denied  him  by  me, 
with  the  consent  of  the  faculty  of  philosophy, 
for  weighty  reasons,  he  blazed  out,  grossly 
insulting  me  in  my  own  house,  protesting  I 
was  acting  against  the  law  of  nations,  the  cus- 
toms of  all  the  universities  of  Germany,  and 
all  the  schools  of  humanity.  He  refused  then 
to  become  a  member  of  the  university, — his  fee 
was  readily  returned,  and  his  name  accordingly 
erased  from  the  album  of  the  university  by 
me."  At  a  later  period  the  name  of  Bruno 
could  still  be  made  out  under  the  heavy  line 
drawn  across  it  by  the  rector.  A  subsequent 
rector,  finding  Bruno  more  famous,  rewrote  the 
name  above  the  line,  and  crossed  out,  "with  the 
consent  of  the  faculty  of  philosophy"  in  the 
rector's  note. 

Bruno  went  to  Wittenburg,  where  the  Luth- 
erans were  in  power,  and  obtained  permission 
to  lecture  on  the  condition  of  not  conflicting 
with  their  religion.  For  two  years  he  ex- 
pounded Aristotle's  Organon  and  taught  his 
own  Art  of  Memory.  Wittenburg  gave  him  a 
period  of  peace  equalled  only  by  Paris  and  Lon- 
don. The  grateful  Italian  responded  in  the 


BEUNO  THE  WANDERER          111 

dedication  of  one  of  his  books  on  memory: 
"Because  I  was  a  pupil  in  the  temple  of  the 
Muses,  you  thought  me  worthy  of  the  kindliest 
welcome,  enrolled  me  in  the  album,  of  your 
academy,  and  gave  me  a  place  in  a  body  of 
men  so  noble  and  learned  that  I  could  not  fail 
to  see  in  you  neither  a  private  school  nor  an 
exclusive  conventicle,  but  as  becomes  the 
Athens  of  Germany,  a  true  university." 
Among  other  books  published  here  was  the  one 
intended,  "To  enable  one  to  dispute  promptly 
and  copiously  on  any  subject  proposed,"  in 
which  art  he  was  unequalled. 

From  Wittenburg,  he  was  tempted  to  Prague, 
in  Bohemia,  by  the  reputation  of  Emperor  Ru- 
dolf II,  as  a  patron  of  learning.  He  found  the 
Emperor  almost  entirely  absorbed  in  astrology, 
which  Tycho  Brahe  and  Kepler  turned  to  the 
advantage  of  astronomy.  Rudolf  recognized 
the  Nolan's  powers  to  the  extent  of  giving 
three  hundred  dollars,  and  he  resumed  his 
travels,  calling  at  Helmstadt,  on  his  way  to 
Frankfort.  Frankfort  was  the  last  of  the 
cities  he  visited  which  was  able  to  keep  him 
from  the  clutches  of  the  Roman  Inquisition. 


CHAPTER  VII 

BRUNO  THE  MARTYR 

AT  FRANKFORT  the  incidents  occurred 
which  led  to  the  tragic  close  of  his 
eventful  career.  In  those  days  Frank- 
fort was  the  world-center  for  books,  and  every 
half  year  printers  and  booksellers  came  to 
Frankfort  to  see  the  world's  new  books  and 
stock  their  houses.  There  came  two  booksellers 
from  Venice,  Giotto  and  Bertano,  who  stayed 
at  the  monastery,  where  they  met  Bruno.  After 
their  return  to  Venice,  Giotto  received  a  call 
at  his  book  shop  from  a  young  Venetian  noble- 
man, Mocenigo,  who  was  destined  to  achieve  a 
reputation  paralleled  only  by  Judas  Iscariot. 
Mocenigo  inquired  for  a  book  by  Bruno,  and 
asked  Giotto  if  he  knew  the  author  and  where 
he  might  be  found?  On  being  told  that  Bruno 
was  in  Frankfort,  he  requested  to  know  if 
Giotto  thought  he  could  be  persuaded  to  come 
to  Venice,  to  teach  him  the  secrets  of  memory, 
and  secrets  of  magic,  the  possession  of  which 
were  credited  to  Bruno  by  popular  ignorance. 
Giotto  thought  he  might,  and  a  few  days  later 
Mocenigo  gave  him  a  letter  for  Bruno,  which 
was  eventually  delivered. 
112 


BKUNO  THE  MARTYR  113 

Bruno 's  dramatic  career  and  the  noble  cour- 
age of  his  closing  years  has  attracted  several 
biographers  and  much  sympathetic  investiga- 
tion, and  all  have  been  amazed  at  the  readiness 
which  Bruno  seems  to  have  accepted  the  peril- 
ous offer  of  Mocenigo.  The  same  astonishment 
seems  to  have  possessed  his  contemporaries. 
On  his  way  to  Venice  he  made  a  brief  stay  at 
Padua,  and  while  there,  one  of  his  friends, 
Michael  Forgacz,  received  a  letter  from  Valens 
Havekenthal,  which  contained  the  following : 
"Tell  me  one  thing  more:  Giordano  Bruno, 
whom  you  knew  at  Wittenburg,  the  Nolan,  is 
said  to  be  living  just  now  among  you  at  Padua. 
Is  it  really  so  ?  What  sort  of  a  man  is  this  that 
he  entered  Italy,  which  he  left  an  exile,  as  he 
used  himself  to  confess  ?  I  wonder,  I  wonder,  I 
cannot  yet  believe  the  rumor,  although  I  have 
it  on  good  authority.  You  shall  tell  me  whether 
it  is  true  or  false."  A  wandering  life  was 
probably  losing  its  charm,  and  he  was  forty- 
three  years  old.  In  the  sixteenth  century  it 
was  less  agreeable  than  now  to  be  a  foreigner, 
and  one  clew  to  his  longing  for  home  may  be 
found  in  his  own  accounts  of  the  kickings  and 
beatings  which  were  given  to  foreigners  in  the 
English  streets  on  the  slightest  pretext.  Again, 
he  was  constantly  seeking,  and  apparently  ex- 


114     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

pecting  to  find,  some  basis  of  compromise  with 
the  church,  by  which  he  would  be  able  to  peace- 
fully pass  his  last  days  on  his  native  soil.  He 
probably  felt  himself  a  part  of  the  church,  seek- 
ing reforms  from  within,  rather  than  an  enemy 
attacking  it  from  without,  for  he  surely  did 
not  realize  how  fierce  had  been  some  of  his  de- 
nunciations. Finally,  he  regarded  Mocenigo  as 
a  powerful  noble,  able  and  willing  to  give  him 
the  protection  he  had  fully  pledged.  Whatever 
may  have  been  back  of  his  decision,  the  event 
proved  that  he  made  a  costly  blunder  when  he 
placed  himself  within  reach  of  the  Holy  Office. 

Whether  Mocenigo  was  merely  a  shallow- 
brained  fool,  or  a  designing  scoundrel,  cannot 
be  definitely  decided,  but  the  evidence  indicates 
that  he  was  both.  It  was  not  long  before  he 
went  whining  to  Ciotto  about  Bruno,  "who 
promised  to  teach  me  much,  and  has  had  clothes 
and  money  in  plenty  from  me,  but  I  cannot 
bring  him  to  a  point,  and  fear  he  may  not  be 
quite  honest."  The  pitiful  patrician  was 
greatly  disappointed  that  his  tutor  had  not 
furnished  him  those  secrets  of  magic,  which 
were  to  give  him  power  over  nature  and  man. 
He  requested  Ciotto,  when  he  next  visited  the 
Frankfort  book-market,  to  inquire  about 
Bruno's  reputation.  Ciotto  returned  with  the 


BRUNO  THE  MARTYR  115 

unfavorable  report  that  in  Frankfort,  the  Ital- 
ian was  held  to  be  a  man  of  no  religion.  Triv- 
ial as  this  charge  would  be  in  our  day,  it  was  a 
very  serious  accusation  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. Mocenigo  then  informed  Giotto,  "I,  too, 
have  my  doubts  of  him,  but  I  will  see  how  much 
I  can  get  of  what  he  promised  me,  so  as  not 
lose  entirely  what  I  have  paid  him,  and  then  I 
will  give  him  up  to  the  judgment  of  the  Holy 
Office."  Holy  Office,  was  the  official  title  of 
that  monstrous  institution,  the  inquisition. 

Bruno  seems  to  have  been  still  unaware  of 
his  danger,  for  he  walked  still  further  into  the 
trap, — he  gave  up  his  lodgings,  from  whence  he 
might  have  fled  the  country  unobserved,  and 
went  to  live  in  Mocenigo 's  house.  Giotto,  whose 
testimony  before  the  inquisition  was  favorable 
to  Bruno,  introduced  him  to  Andrea  Morosini, 
an  educated  and  liberal  nobleman,  whose  house 
was  a  frequent  meeting-place  for  a  group  of 
scholarly  Venetians.  Testifying  before  the  in- 
quisition, Morosini  said:  "Several  gentlemen 
meet  there,  prelates  among  them,  for  entertain- 
ment, discoursing  of  literature,  and  principally 
of  philosophy;  thither  Bruno  came  several 
times,  and  talked  of  several  things,  as  is  the 
custom ;  but  there  was  never  a  sign  that  he  held 
any  opinions  against  the  faith,  and  so  far  as  I 


116     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

am  concerned,  I  have  always  thought  him  a 
Catholic,  and  had  I  had  the  least  suspicion  of 
the  contrary  I  should  not  have  permitted  him 
to  enter  my  house."    Mclntyre,  to  whom  this 
narrative  is  greatly  indebted,  points  out  that 
the  last  sentence  does  not  present  Morosini's 
real  views.    It   does,   however,    indicate    his 
knowledge  of  the  seriousness  of  being  in  the 
disfavor  of  the  Holy  Office.    These  meetings 
evidently  misled  Bruno  as  to  the  safety  of  free 
expression  of  opinion  in  the  Venetian  Republic, 
which  was  really   liberal   and  powerful,   and 
jealous  in  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  its  citi- 
zens   against    the    encroachments    of    Rome. 
Bruno,  moreover,  seems  to  have  strangely  over- 
looked the  important  fact  that  he  was  not  a 
Venetian,  but  a  native  of  Italy.    He  was  still 
nursing  his  delusion  that  he  might  secure  such 
a  reconciliation  with  the  church  as  would  per- 
mit him  to  live  quietly  in  Rome  as  a  lecturer 
and  man  of  letters.    He  was  parleying  to  this 
end  with  several  Venetian  priests,  especially 
Father  Domenico,  who   seems   to   have   been 
sympathetic,  and  who    gave    favorable   testi- 
mony as  to  these  discussions  at  the  trial.    In 
this  project,  he  had  the  worthless  promise  of 
aid  from  Mocenigo. 
At  last,  when  too  late,  Bruno  observed  the 


BRUNO  THE  MAKTYB  117 

gathering  cloud  and  formed  a  plan  of  escape. 
He  pretended  a  desire  to  go  to  Frankfort  to  get 
some  books  printed,  but  made  the  mistake  of 
bidding  Mocenigo  goodby.  It  is  very  doubt- 
ful, however,  whether  he  would  have  been  able 
to  escape  in  any  event.  On  the  night  set  for 
his  departure,  Mocenigo,  with  five  or  six  gon- 
doliers, seized  him,  and  locked  him  in  an  attic. 
He  was  then  turned  over  to  the  Holy  Office, 
with  a  mass  of  grotesque  charges  about  magic, 
which  were  chiefly  a  reflection  of  Mocenigo 's 
own  superstitions.  Of  a  second  denunciation 
by  Mocenigo,  Mclntyre  says,  "there  is  no  more 
pitiful  self -revelation  of  meanness  and  hypocrisy 
extant."  The  description  of  the  prisoner  was, 
"A  man  of  ordinary  stature,  with  chestnut 
brown  beard,  of  the  age  and  appearance  of 
forty  years." 

At  the  request  of  the  Father  inquisitor, 
Mocenigo  made  a  still  further  deposition  in 
which  he  accused  Bruno  of  saying  that  it  was 
a  mistake  to  allow  the  friars  to  remain  so  rich 
in  Venice ;  they  should  do  as  in  France,  where 
the  nobles  enjoyed  the  revenues  of  the  monas- 
teries, the  friars  living  on  soup,  as  befitted 
such  "asses."  About  the  same  time  Bertano, 
the  book-seller,  gave  evidence  that  he  recalled 
having  heard  the  prior  of  the  Carmelite  mon- 


118     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

astery  at  Frankfort  say  of  Bruno,  that  he  spent 
most  of  his  time  in  writing,  and  went  about 
dreaming  dreams  and  meditating  new  things, 
that  he  had  a  fine  mind  and  knowledge  of  let- 
ters, and  was  a  universal  man,  but  that  he  had 
no  religion  so  far  as  the  prior  knew.  At  these 
hearings  Bruno  gave  the  account  of  his  travels 
which  furnishes  the  information  summarized  in 
the  proceeding  pages. 

The  prisoner  gave  his  judges  a  statement  of 
his  creed,  one  passage  of  which  is  enough  to 
show  its  contrast  to  the  puerile  superstitions 
of  the  time :  "I  believe  in  an  infinite  universe, 
the  effect  of  the  infinite  divine  potency,  because 
it  has  seemed  to  me  unworthy  of  the  divine 
goodness  and  power  to  create  a  finite  world, 
when  able  to  produce  besides  it  another  and 
infinite;  so  that  I  have  declared  that 
there  are  endless  particular  worlds  similar  to 
this  of  the  Earth ;  with  Pythagoras  I  regard  it 
as  a  star,  and  similar  to  it  are  the  moon,  the 
planets,  and  other  stars,  which  are  infinite,  and 
all  these  bodies  are  worlds,  and  without  num- 
ber, constituting  the  infinite  all  in  an  infinite 
space."  This  noble  concept  of  the  immensity 
of  the  universe  not  only  sounded  strangely  to 
the  people  of  his  day,  but  it  was  bitterly  of- 
fensive to  the  priestly  ear.  It  was  in  violent 


BRUNO  THE  MARTYR  119 

conflict  with  the  priestly  notion  that  this  earth 
was  so  pre-eminently  important,  that  the  cre- 
ator had  died  for  the  salvation  of  its  in- 
habitants. 

The  next  development  in  the  drama  was  the 
struggle  for  the  extradition  of  the  prisoner  to 
Rome.  There  "The  Sacred  Congregation  of 
the  Supreme  Tribunal  of  the  Holy  Office,"  was 
waiting  impatiently  for  the  opportunity  to 
wreak  its  vengeance  on  the  helpless  prophet  of 
modern  thought.  The  appeal  was  made  to  the 
Doge  and  Senators,  and  the  Father  Inquisitor 
urged  a  decision,  informing  them  that  a  vessel 
was  ready  to  set  out.  The  reply  of  the  Senate 
was  that  "the  matter  being  of  moment,  and  de- 
serving consideration,  and  the  occupations  of 
the  State  being  many  and  weighty,  they  could 
not  at  that  time  come  to  a  decision,  and  his 
Reverence  might  for  the  present  let  the  vessel 
sail."  Three  days  before  Christmas,  the  Papal 
Nuncio  appeared  before  the  Senate,  and 
pleaded  that  Bruno  was  a  Neapolitan,  and  not  a 
subject  of  the  Venetian  Republic.  On  the  sev- 
enth of  January  the  plea  was  resumed  by  the 
procurator,  Contarini,  who  said,  "his  faults 
were  extremely  grave  in  respect  of  heresies, 
although  in  other  respects  one  of  the  most 
excellent  and  rarest  natures,  and  of  exquisite 


120     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

learning  and  knowledge."  The  political  situa- 
tion of  the  moment  was  fatal  to  Bruno.  It  was 
considered  desirable  to  conciliate  the  Pope,  and 
on  the  same  day  it  was  decreed  by  the  Senate 
that,  "to  gratify  the  Pope,  the  said  Giordano 
Bruno  be  remitted  to  the  Tribunal  of  the  In- 
quisition at  Rome,  being  consigned  to  Mon- 
signor  the  Nuncio  that  he  may  be  sent  in  what 
custody  and  by  what  means  his  Reverend 
Lordship  thinks  best ;  that  the  Nuncio  be  noti- 
fied of  this,  and  that  our  Ambassador  at  Rome 
be  also  advised  thereof  to  represent  it  to  his 
Holiness  as  a  mark  of  the  continued  readiness 
of  the  Republic  to  do  what  is  pleasing  to  him." 
Bruno,  the  ill-starred  knight-errant  of  phil- 
osophy, entered  the  Roman  prison  of  the  In- 
quisition on  the  27th  of  February,  1593,  and 
from  that  moment  his  fate  was  sealed. 

Though  the  Inquisition  was  notoriously  quick 
to  strike  its  victims,  Bruno,  for  reasons  which 
will  probably  never  be  known,  remained  in  its 
dungeons  for  the  next  six  years.  The  use  of 
torture  was  the  rule,  and  there  is  not  the 
slightest  reason  for  believing  that  Bruno  es- 
caped. In  1849  an  opportunity  was  given  to 
study  the  records  in  the  Vatican;  the  student 
began  at  1600,  the  year  of  Bruno's  death  and 
worked  back  to  November,  1598,  when  the  per- 


BKUNO  THE  MARTYR  121 

mission  was  withdrawn,  and  the  world  had  to 
be  satisfied  with  the  assertion  that  there  were 
no  more  documents,  though  it  is  difficult  to 
understand,  if  that  were  really  the  case,  why 
the  investigator  was  not  allowed  to  convince 
himself. 

One  wonders  if  human  society  will  ever 
again  sink  to  the  point  of  treating  a  man  as 
worse  than  a  murderer  because  he  disagrees 
with  a  church  on  such  points  as  (1)  the  dis- 
tinctions of  the  persons  in  God ;  (2)  the  incar- 
nation of  the  Word ;  (3)  the  nature  of  the  Holy 
Spirit;  (4)  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  which  were 
the  first  and  most  important  half  of  the  sub- 
jects on  which  Bruno  was  charged  with  heresy. 
There  is  also  something  utterly  disgusting  in 
the  urging  of  the  prisoner  to  long  discussions 
of  these  crack-brained  questions,  when  all  the 
parties  to  the  pitiful  proceedings  knew  that, 
no  matter  what  he  said,  he  was  to  be  burned 
alive  at  the  end  of  the  mock-debate. 

It  has  been  held  that  Bruno  twisted  and 
turned  before  the  Venetian  Tribunal,  in  his 
efforts  to  escape  the  hungry  maw  of  the  Holy 
Office,  but  he  can  hardly  be  blamed  when  it  is 
remembered  that  he  knew  of  the  fiendish  de- 
vices for  producing  unendurable  agony,  ruth- 
lessly applied  until  men  swooned  from  pain, 


122     SCIENCE  AND  SUPEKSTITION 

by  inhuman  monsters  whose  souls  were  seared 
by  the  love  of  God.  All-  writers  are  agreed 
that  from  the  moment  he  was  thrown  into  the 
Roman  prison,  and  realized  his  inevitable  fate, 
his  courage  was  unwavering  and  magnificent. 
He  defied  his  Roman  inquisitors,  and  they  re- 
ported him  as  saying,  that  he  neither  ought  nor 
will  recant,  that  he  has  nothing  to  recant,  no 
matter  for  recantation,  does  not  know  what  he 
ought  to  recant." 

Prominent  among  his  inquisitors  was  the 
fanatical  San  Severin,  who  stands  forth  in  his- 
tory as  the  man  who  declared  the  drenching  of 
Parisian  streets  with  Protestant  blood  on  St. 
Bartholomew's  Eve,  as  "a  glorious  day,  a  day 
of  joy  for  Catholics."  The  Tribunal  appointed 
Hippolyte  Maria,  general  of  the  Dominican  or- 
der, and  Paul  of  Mirandula,  the  vicar,  "to  deal 
with  Bruno,  show  him  what  had  to  be  abjured, 
that  he  might  confess  his  errors,  amend  his 
ways,  and  agree  to  abjure;  and  should  try  to 
bring  him  to  the  point  as  soon  as  possible." 
They  reported  their  efforts  fruitless,  as  Bruno 
stood  firm. 

At  the  meeting  of  January  20th,  1600,  the 
Pope  being  present,  and  refusing  to  read  a 
memorial  from  Bruno,  it  was  decreed,  "that 
sentence  be  passed,  and  that  the  said  Friar 


BRUNO  THE  MARTYR  123 

Giordano  be  handed  over  to  the  secular  author- 
ity. ' '  The  decree  was  carried  out  on  the  eighth 
of  February,  when  he  was  placed  in  the  hands 
of  the  Governor  of  Rome,  with  the  usual  recom- 
mendation that  he  be  punished  "with  as  great 
clemency  as  possible,  and  without  effusion  of 
blood,"  which  was  the  euphemistic  and  hy- 
pocritical formula  for  burning  at  the  stake. 

For  a  long  time  the  only  evidence  of  the 
burning  of  Bruno  was  a  letter  by  Gaspar 
Schopp,  and  Catholic  writers  were  confident  in 
their  assertions  that  it  never  occurred.  Later 
discoveries  of  documents  not  then  known  to  be 
in  existence,  have  abolished  this  line  of  defense, 
except  for  a  few  irresponsible  scribes,  who  rely 
upon  the  dense  ignorance  of  their  readers. 
Schopp 's  letter,  then  denounced  as  a  forgery, 
but  now  admitted  to  be  genuine,  was  written 
from  Rome  to  Conrad  Rittershausen.  Schopp 
had  renounced  Protestantism,  embraced  Cath- 
olicism, and  journeyed  to  Rome  in  search  of 
his  reward.  He  was  not  disappointed,  as  he 
was  quickly  admitted  to  the  Pope's  favor, 
made  a  knight  of  St.  Peter,  and  a  count  of  the 
Sacred  Palace.  His  letter  relates  how  Bruno's 
sentence  charged  him  with  the  damnatory 
crime  of  "early  doubts  concerning  and  ulti- 
mate denial  of  the  Transubstantiation,  and  of 


124     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

the  virgin  conception,  and  cited  as  among  the 
'horrible   absurdities'   of  his  Latin  writings, 
his  doctrine  of  the  infinite  number  of  worlds. 
The  one  redeeming  feature  of  the  letter  is  its 
record    of    Bruno's    reply    to    his    judges: 
'Greater  perhaps  is  your  fear  in  pronouncing 
my  sentence  than  mine  in  hearing  it. '  "  Schopp 
was  present  at  the   burning,    and   tells   how 
Bruno  turned  his  eyes  angrily  away  from  the 
crucifix  held  before  him,  and  adds,  "he  was 
burned  and  perished  miserably,  and  is  gone  to 
tell,  I  suppose,  in  those  other  worlds  of  his 
fancy,  how  the  blasphemous  and  impious  are 
dealt  with  by  the  Romans."    "It  is  pleasant 
to  know,"  says  Mclntyre,  "that  when  Lord 
Digby  was  English  Ambassador  to  Spain  he 
caused  Gaspard  Schopp  to  be  horse-whipped. ' ' 
The  Count   of   Ventimiglia,    one    of   Bruno's 
pupils,  was  also  present  at  the  burning.    The 
"Awisi"  and  the  "Ritorni"  which  served  as 
the  Roman  newspapers  of  the  time,  have  been 
unearthed,  and  both  contain  accounts  of  the  ex- 
ecution, one  describing  him  as  a  Friar  of  St. 
Dominic,  of  Nola,  burnt  alive  in  the  Campo  di 
Fiori,   an   obstinate   heretic,  with  his  tongue 
tied.    This  latter  detail  was  a  common  feature 
of  the  burnings  of  heretics,  as  it  prevented  the 


BRUNO  THE  MARTYR  125 

crowd  from  hearing  the  victims  heap  their 
curses  on  the  Church. 

The  last  possible  doubt  as  to  the  burning  of 
Bruno  was  dispelled  by  the  discovery  of  the 
report  of  the  Company  of  St.  John,  the  Be- 
headed. This  organization  had  for  its  function, 
the  attendance  upon  heretics  in  their  last  hours 
and  death.  By  a  fine  piece  of  sarcasm,  they 
were  sometimes  called  the  Company  of  Mercy, 
for  about  all  they  did  was  to  annoy  the  victims 
with  urgent  requests  to  repent  of  their  sins, 
the  priests  thrusting  images  and  crucifixes  in 
their  faces  while  the  fire  was  being  started.  It 
is  recorded  that  they  were  not  above  co-operat- 
ing with  the  executioner  in  the  use  of  cruel  de- 
vices to  compel  the  victim  to  appear  to  be  kiss- 
ing the  cross  when  they  were  really  trying  to 
avoid  it.  Their  Official  Report  of  the  burning 
of  Europe's  noblest  thinker  gives  a  realistic 
and  vivid  picture  of  the  event : 

"At  the  second  hour  of  the  night  it  was  in- 
timated to  the  Company  that  an  impenitent  was 
to  be  executed  in  the  morning ;  so  at  the  sixth 
hour  the  comforters  and  the  chaplain  met  at 
St.  Ursula,  and  went  to  the  prison  of  the 
Tower  of  Nona.  After  the  customary  prayers 
in  the  chapel  there  was  consigned  to  them  the 
under  mentioned  condemned  to  death,  viz.: 


126     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Giordana,  son  of  the  late  Giovanni  Bruno,  an 
Apostate  Friar  of  Nola  in  the  kingdom,  an  im- 
penitent heretic  .  With  all  charity  our  brethren 
exhorted  him  to  repent,  and  there  were  called 
two  Fathers  of  St.  Dominic,  two  of  the  Society 
of  Jesus,  two  of  the  new  Church,  and  one  of 
St.  Jerome,  who,  with  all  affection  and  much 
learning,  showed  him  his  error,  but  he  re- 
mained to  the  end  in  his  accursed  obstinacy, 
his  brain  and  intellect  seething  with  a  thousand 
errors  and  vanities.  So,  persevering  in  his  ob- 
stinacy, he  was  led  by  the  servants  of  justice 
to  the  Campo  dei  Fiori,  there  stripped,  bound 
to  a  stake,  and  burned  alive,  attended  always 
by  our  Company  chanting  the  litanies,  the  com- 
forters exhorting  him  up  to  the  last  point  to 
abandon  his  obstinacy,  but  in  it  finally  he 
ended  his  miserable,  unhappy  life." 

Thus,  on  the  seventeenth  day  of  February, 
of  the  year  1600,  in  the  flower  market  of  Rome, 
amid  the  dismal  chanting  of  monks,  the  great- 
est of  the  Italians  passed  from  the  earth,  his 
ashes  scattered  by  the  winds,  as  his  sublime 
doctrine  of  the  infinite  number  of  worlds, 
spread  among  the  minds  of  men.  In  the  his- 
toric struggle  between  science  and  superstition, 
for  the  moment,  the  cowled  army  was  tri- 
umphant, but  posterity  has  reversed  the  ver- 


BRUNO  THE  MARTYR  127 

diet,  and  today  the  Church  is  suppliant  at  the 
bar  of  civilization,  begging  men  to  forget  her 
medieval  murders. 

On  the  ninth  day  of  June,  in  the  year  1889, 
in  the  same  flower  market,  with  the  conspicu- 
ous absence  of  priests,  there  gathered  a  vast 
concourse  of  thirty  thousand  men  and  women, 
representing  every  civilized  country.  With 
bared  heads  they  witnessed  the  unveiling  of  a 
magnificent  statue  of  the  martyred  Bruno,  con- 
tributed as  a  monument  of  his  final  triumph  by 
the  freemen  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

GALILEO  TO   1616 

THIRTY-SIX  years  before  the  prophet  of 
modern  science  was  burned,  the  man 
who  was  destined  to  be  the  greatest  of 
its  early  exponents  was  born.  On  the  18th  of 
February,  1564,  there  was  a  very  important 
addition  to  the  family  of  Vincenzo  Galileo, 
which,  at  the  time,  was  visiting  at  Pisa,  fa- 
mous for  its  leaning  tower.  Presently  the  fam- 
ily returned  to  Florence,  and  there  the  boy 
grew  up  and  received  the  beginnings  of  his 
education.  He  was  instructed  in  the  classics, 
as  became  the  son  of  a  nobleman,  but  as  the 
father  had  no  property  and  but  a  small  in- 
come, he  was  to  be  denied  a  professional  ca- 
reer, and  devote  himself  to  the  honorable  and 
lucrative  occupation  of  a  cloth  dealer. 

The  pupil  learned  his  early  lessons  so  rapidly 
that  his  father  changed  his  plan  from  the  dis- 
tribution of  fabrics  to  the  practice  of  medicine, 
considered  to  be  the  most  remunerative  of  the 
sciences.  At  seventeen  he  was  entered  at  the 
University  of  Pisa,  and  it  was  here  that  he 
gave  the  first  indication  of  a  genius  that  was 
to  leave  its  impress  on  the  world  to  the  end 
of  time.  When  he  was  kneeling  in  the  Ca- 
128 


GALILEO  TO  1616  129 

thedral,  and  supposed  to  be  deep  in  prayer, 
he  really  had  his  eye  fixed  on  Maestro  Pos- 
senti's  beautiful  lamp  swinging  in  the  arch- 
way to  better  distribute  the  light.  He  dis- 
covered by  feeling  his  pulse,  that  while  the 
length  of  the  lamp's  swing  became  shorter,  the 
time  consumed  by  each  swing  remained  the 
same.  The  pendulum  being  thus  discovered,  it 
was  a  short  step  to  clocks,  and  the  young 
observer's  fame  began  to  spread  through 
Europe. 

Then  something  happened  to  turn  his  atten- 
tion away  from  medicine.  The  Court  of 
Tuscany  came  to  Pisa,  and  every  morning  while 
Ricci,  the  governor  of  the  pages,  was  giving 
them  their  morning  lesson  in  mathematics, 
young  Galileo  listened  eagerly  from  a  hiding 
place  in  the  door-way.  Finally,  in  his  eager- 
ness, he  revealed  himself  to  the  astonished 
teacher,  and  asked  the  privilege  of  further 
instruction,  which  was  quickly  granted.  He 
secured  his  father's  permission  to  turn  from 
medicine  to  physics,  of  which  science  he  is  the 
universally  recognized  founder.  He  failed  to 
secure  one  of  the  forty  free  places  for  poor 
students,  because  of  his  opposition  to  the  par- 
alyzing authority  of  Aristotle,  and  had  to  go 
home  without  his  degree.  His  talents  having 


130     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

already  attracted  the  notice  of  learned  men, 
through  the  influence  of  Riccoboni,  Marquis 
and  mathematician,  he  secured  the  vacant  po- 
sition of  professor  of  mathematics  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pisa.  The  economic  unwisdom  of 
his  last  change  of  calling  appears  in  his  salary 
of  sixty  scudi  a  year,  whereas  the  professor 
of  medicine  in  the  same  institution  received 
two  thousand. 

He  found  it  impossible  to  repress  his  oppo- 
sition to  the  uncritical  worship  of  Aristotle, 
which  had  caused  so  many  of  the  misfortunes 
of  Bruno.  Varchi  in  1544,  and  Benedetti  in 
1563,  had  denied  Aristotle's  proposition  that 
the  rate  at  which  a  body  falls  depends  on  its 
weight,  and  had  supported  their  denials  by 
clever  reasoning,  but  Galileo  was  the  first  to 
anticipate  the  methods  of  modern  science,  by 
putting  it  to  the  test  of  experiment.  One  morn- 
ing, before  the  assembled  university,  he  as- 
cended the  famous  tower  of  Pisa,  which  leaned 
over  as  if  for  the  purpose  of  the  experiment, 
which  was  the  most  important  event  in  its 
history.  Aristotle  had  said  that  a  ten  pound 
ball  would  fall  ten  times  faster  than  a  one 
pound  ball.  To  put  the  demonstration  beyond 
dispute,  Galileo  dropped  a  one  pound  ball,  and 
a  one  hundred  pound  ball,  at  the  same  instant, 


GALILEO  TO  1616  131 

and  the  great  assemblage  saw  them  start  and 
strike  the  ground  together.  Some  were  con- 
vinced, others  preferred  the  authority  of  the 
Aristotelian  text  to  the  evidence  of  their  own 
senses,  and  many  did  not  dare  to  admit  their 
conversion.  While  the  creator  of  modern  phy- 
sics had  given  the  almost  divine  authority  of 
the  misused  Greek  philosopher  a  mortal 
wound,  the  only  immediate  result  to  himself 
was  to  insure  his  being  driven  from  the  uni- 
versity. This  was  accomplished  through  his 
impolitic  condemnation  of  an  invention  of  a 
distant  relative  of  the  Grand  Duke,  for  clean- 
ing out  the  harbor  of  Leghorn.  It  did  not  help 
Galileo  that  he  had  been  commissioned  to  ex- 
amine the  machine,  or  that  experiment  con- 
firmed his  verdict. 

Fortunately,  his  dismissal  turned  to  his  ad- 
vantage, for  the  learned  Riccaboni  came  again 
to  the  rescue,  and  he  was  engaged  for  six  years 
by  the  Republic  of  Venice,  as  professor  of 
mathematics  in  the  University  of  Padua.  He 
arrived  at  Padua,  to  take  up  his  new  duties,  a 
few  months  after  Bruno  had  left  on  his  fate- 
ful journey  to  Venice.  Though  only  twenty- 
eight  years  old,  he  began,  almost  immediately, 
to  reap  the  reward  of  his  great  ability.  He  at- 
tracted so  many  pupils,  including  a  number 


132     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

of  distinguished  persons,  from  all  over  Europe, 
that  no  lecture  hall  in  Padua  was  large  enough 
to  hold  them.  The  Senate  of  the  Republic  was 
quick  to  recognize  the  value  of  his  services; 
they  treated  him  generously  and  held  him  in 
high  regard.  He  accompanied  his  lectures 
with  many  curious  demonstrations,  invented 
many  machines  of  great  value  to  the  Republic, 
and  invented  a  heat  indicator — a  thermoscope 
— which  led  to  the  thermometer,  but  was  not 
itself  a  thermometer,  as  claimed  by  some  of 
his  over-zealous  biographers.  Near  the  close 
of  his  six  years  he  wrote  to  Kepler,  Germany  *s 
foremost  astronomer:  "I  count  myself  happy, 
in  the  search  after  truth,  to  have  so  great 
an  ally  as  yourself.  ...  I  have  been  for 
many  years  an  adherent  of  the  Copernican  sys- 
tem, and  it  explains  to  me  the  causes  of  many 
of  the  appearances  of  nature  which  are  quite 
unintelligible  on  the  commonly  accepted  hy- 
pothesis. I  have  collected  many  arguments  for 
the  purpose  of  refuting  the  latter.  ...  I 
should  certainly  venture  to  publish  my  specula- 
tions if  there  was  more  people  like  you.  But 
this  not  being  the  case,  I  refrain  from  the 
undertaking." 

At  the  close  of  his  six  years  he  was  eagerly 
re-engaged  for  a  similar  term,  his  annual  sal- 


GALILEO  TO  1616  133 

ary  being  steadily  raised  from  18  to  400 
zecchini — $90  to  $2,000.  During  his  second 
term  he  made  his  epoch-creating  telescope. 
Galileo  himself  contradicts  those  over-enthusi- 
astic eulogists,  who  have  claimed  that  his  tele- 
scope was  the  first.  He  says  that  he  had  heard 
that  a  Dutchman  had  made  an  instrument,  by 
means  of  which  distant  objects  were  brought 
nearer,  and  could  be  seen  very  plainly.  The 
Dutchman  was  Lippershey.  With  no  further 
information  he  quickly  succeeded  in  making 
one  of  his  own,  and  by  further  experiment, 
having  "spared  neither  expense  nor  labor,"  he 
finally  obtained  an  instrument  which  brought 
an  object  more  than  thirty  times  nearer.  This 
astonishing  achievement  was  destined  to  lead 
to  serious  trouble.  The  Church  did  not  con- 
cern itself  with  the  Copernican  conception  of 
the  universe,  so  long  as  it  could  be  regarded  as 
an  unproved  and  unprovable  phantasm. 
The  wide  liberty  allowed  in  the  discussions  of 
the  scholastic  philosophy  was  due  to  its  con- 
clusions being  as  vaporous  as  the  processes  by 
which  they  were  reached.  The  achievements 
of  the  telescope  were  definite,  and  their  impli- 
cations unmistakable.  The  seven  known  stars 
of  the  Pleiades  rose  to  thirty-six,  and  the  seven 
of  Orion  were  increased  by  five  hundred.  The 


134     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

milky  way  ceased  to  be  a  luminous  mist,  and 
became  a  girdle  composed  of  millions  of  indi- 
vidual stars.  The  planets  appeared  as  disks, 
while  the  stars  remained,  as  they  still  remain 
in  the  largest  telescopes,  and,  because  of  their 
enormous  distance,  always  must  remain,  mere 
points  of  light.  There  was  a  revelation  which 
set  all  Europe  by  the  ears  when  Galileo  turned 
his  crude  telescope  on  the  mighty  Jupiter. 
Four  specks  of  light,  always  in  a  straight  line, 
because  they  circle  the  planet  in  the  same  plane, 
must  for  a  certainty  be  Jupiter's  moons. 

And  so  the  long  cherished  dogma  of  the 
earth's  supremacy  vanished  before  the  astron- 
omer's ardent  gaze;  the  earth  was  not  even 
monarch  of  the  planets,  for  here  was  a  king 
with  four  courtiers  to  the  earth's  one.  In  our 
day  it  is  impossible  to  realize  the  storm  which 
broke  forth  with  this  announcement.  The 
ignorant  champions  of  the  Holy  Faith  donned 
their  armor  and  came  forth  to  battle,  with  a 
confidence  born  of  their  inability  to  under- 
stand. Even  the  learned  Clavius  at  Rome,  said 
that  "he  laughed  at  the  pretended  satellites  of 
Jupiter ;  you  must  construct  a  telescope  which 
would  first  make  them  and  then  show  them." 
With  such  an  illustrious  example,  the  Aris- 
totelians were  not  slow  to  assert  that  the  tele- 


GALILEO  TO  1616  135 

scope  was  constructed  to  show  things  that  did 
not  exist,  although  Galileo  offered  10,000  scudi 
to  anyone  who  could  construct  such  an  instru- 
ment. Julius  Libri  violenty  opposed,  but  re- 
fused to  look  through  the  telescope,  and  when 
he  died,  Galileo,  in  a  letter  he  was  writing  at 
the  time,  said  that  as  Libri  was  never  willing 
to  look  at  Jupiter's  moons  from  the  earth,  he 
might  perhaps  see  them  on  his  way  to  heaven. 

Not  only  did  Jupiter  overthrow  the  ancient 
and  current  doctrine  that  the  earth  was  the 
only  center  of  motion,  but  the  Peripatetic  fa- 
natics were  further  discredited  when  the  tele- 
scope was  turned  on  the  sun  and  moon.  Galileo 
declared  the  moon  to  have  an  irregular  sur- 
face, while  the  apparently  even  face  of  the  sun 
was  disfigured  by  dark  spots  which  changed 
their  form  and  position,  all  of  which  con- 
tradicted the  Aristotelian  idea  that  all  the 
heavenly  bodies  were  "perfect  and  immutable." 
The  spots  on  the  sun  had  been  previously  ob- 
served with  the  naked  eye,  but  had  been 
explained  as  the  passing  of  Mercury  before  the 
sun.  When  Galileo  presented  a  telescope  to 
the  Venetian  Senate,  he  was  made  professor 
for  life  at  a  salary  of  one  thousand  florins. 

We  now  reach  a  crisis  in  the  astronomer's 
career.  He  gradually  developed  the  fixed  idea 


136     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

of  returning  to  Italy.  This  was  an  exact  coun- 
terpart of  the  mistake  made  by  Bruno  when  he 
left  Frankfort  for  Venice.  Under  no  circum- 
stances would  the  Senate,  which  had  sacrificed 
Bruno  to  diplomacy,  have  given  up  its  famous 
professor,  had  he  remained  in  their  service. 
The  relations  of  the  two  governments  had  en- 
tirely changed.  Six  years  after  the  burning  of 
Bruno  Pope  Paul  V.  had  issued  an  interdict 
against  the  Republic,  which  had  replied  by 
driving  the  Jesuit  Fathers  from  the  soil  of 
Venice  "for  ever,"  and  Rome  had  again  coun- 
tered by  the  excommunication  of  the  Doge 
and  Senate.  Had  all  this  happened  before  1593, 
the  Pope  would  have  begged  in  vain  for  Bruno, 
though  for  him  the  Venetians  had  felt  no  such 
obligations  as  for  Galileo.  Galileo  began  to 
feel  a  great  desire'  to  give  his  mass  of  accu- 
mulating knowledge  the  permanence  of  books, 
but  was  hindered  by  having  his  time  absorbed 
in  the  delivery  of  lectures.  His  letters  of  this 
period  express  his  desire  for  a  salaried  posi- 
tion, free  from  academic  duties,  thus  giving  the 
leisure  for  the  production  of  his  contemplated 
books.  He  felt  this  salaried  leisure  could  only 
be  found  in  the  employ  of  some  wealthy  patron 
of  science.  One  of  his  letters  says:  "It  would 
not  be  suitable  to  receive  a  salary  from  a  free 


GALILEO  TO  1616  137 

state,  without  serving  the  public  for  it ;  because 
if  you  derive  benefit  from  the  public,  you  have 
the  public  to  please,  and  not  a  mere  private 
person."    In  this  dilemma,  he  turned  to  the 
Grand  Duke  of  his  native  kingdom,  Tuscany. 
As  this  looked  like  ingratitude  to  the  Repub- 
lic, he  kept  the  negotiations  wth  the  Grand 
Duke  a  secret  from  Venice  until  they  were 
completed  and  irrevocable.    The  Grand  Duke 
Cosmo  II.  gave  him  the  position  of  first  philos- 
opher to  the  University  of  Pisa,  at  a  salary  of 
one  thousand  Florentine  scudi,  with  no  obliga- 
tion to  live  at  Pisa  or  to  deliver  lectures.   In 
the  September  of  1610,  Galileo  departed  from 
Padua.    His  friend  Sagredo  was  in  the  East, 
on  business  of  the  Republic,  at  the  time,  and 
did  not  return  to  Padua  until  the  following 
spring.    Immediately  on  his  return,  he  wrote 
to  Galileo,  expressing  his  amazement  and  re- 
gret at  finding  Galileo  gone,  and  his  fears  for 
his  safety  away  from  the  protection  of  the 
free  Republic,  adding  that  as  he  was  "con- 
vinced that  as  Galileo  could  not  regain  what 
he  had  lost,  he  would  take  good  care  to  hold 
fast  what  he  had  gained."     From  which  it 
appears  that  the  disappointment  of  the  Vene- 
tians over  Galileo's  leaving,  was  sufficiently 
bitter  to  make  his  return  impossible. 


138     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

For  a  time  Galileo  was  greatly  honored  in 
Italy,  but  the  priests  were  powerful  there,  and 
the  troubles  feared  for  him  by  his  friends  soon 
appeared.  Destiny  had  chosen  him  as  the 
great  protagonist  of  the  new  system  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  the  black  robed  defenders  of  the 
ancient  faith  were  mustering  their  forces  for 
the  struggle.  It  was  to  be  Ptolemy  against 
Copernicus,  and  the  intellect  of  Europe  was,  if 
possible,  to  be  kept  in  bondage  to  the  blunders 
of  ancient  science,  petrified  forever  in  the  name 
of  religion.  Only  a  month  after  his  arrival  in 
Florence,  he  dealt  the  geo-centric— earth-cen- 
ter— theory  a  heavy  blow.  It  had  been  pointed 
out  to  Copernicus  that  if  Ptolemy  was  wrong, 
and  he  right,  Venus  should  show  phases  like 
the  moon.  The  founder  of  modern  astronomy 
had  replied:  "You  are  right;  I  know  not  what 
to  say;  but  God  is  good,  and  will  in  time  find 
an  answer  to  this  objection."  It  was  for  Gali- 
leo's telescope  to  furnish  the  answer;  the  only 
difficulty  had  been  that  the  phases  of  Venus 
were  beyond  the  reach  of  the  naked  eye,  for 
they  were  plainly  visible  even  in  Galileo's 
crude  instrument. 

Soon  after  this  Galileo  discovered  the  spots 
on  the  sun,  and  from  their  regular  motion 
across  its  surface,  announced  that  the  sun 


GALILEO  TO  1616  139 

turned  on  its  axis.  As  this  was  in  conflict  with 
the  accepted  system,  it  was  received  "frown- 
ingly."  Professor  Andrew  Dickson  White 
says:  "Monsignor  Elci,  head  of  the  University 
or  Pisa,  forbade  the  astronomer  Castelli  to  men- 
tion these  spots  to  his  students.  Father 
Busaeus,  at  the  University  of  Innspruck,  for- 
bade the  astronomer  Scheiner,  who  had  also 
discovered  the  spots  and  proposed  a  safe  ex- 
planation of  them,  to  allow  the  new  discovery 
to  be  known  there.  At  the  college  of  Douay 
and  the  University  of  Louvain  this  discovery 
was  expressly  placed  under  the  ban,  and  this 
became  the  general  rule  among  the  Catholic 
universities  and  colleges  of  Europe." 

In  all  the  scientific  controversies  Galileo  was 
easily  victorious,  and  his  enemies  shrewdly  per- 
ceived that  the  theological  armory  would  fur- 
nish their  most  effective  weapons  against  him. 
A  week  before  Christmas,  1611,  he  received  a 
letter  from  his  friend  Cigoli,  the  painter,  which 
convinced  him  he  was  living  in  a  fool's  paradise 
of  fancied  security.  Cigoli  gave  him  the  de- 
tails of  the  conferences  of  high  ecclesiastics, 
held  in  the  palace  of  the  Archbishop  of  Tus- 
cany at  Florence,  where  means  to  accomplish 
his  ruin  were  the  sole  topics  of  discussion.  Pro- 
fessor White  says :  "Pope  Paul  V.  while  petting 


140     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Galileo  and  inviting  him  as  the  greatest  astron- 
omer of  the  world  to  visit  Rome,  was  secretly 
moving  the  Archbishop  of  Pisa  to  pick  up  evi- 
dence against  the  astronomer."  A  fanatical 
young  monk,  Sizy,  opened  the  theological  bat- 
tery by  asserting,  in  his  book  published  at 
Venice,  1611,  that  the  existence  of  the  moons  of 
Jupiter  was  incompatible  with  the  doctrines  of 
Holy  Scripture.  Father  Caccini,  the  Dominican 
monk,  turned  punster,  and  preached  a  sermon 
from  the  text,  "Ye  men  of  Galilee,  why  stand 
ye  gazing  up  into  heaven. ' '  Father  Lorini,  pro- 
fessor of  ecclesiastical  history  at  Florence,  de- 
scribed by  the  German  scholar  Gebler,  as  "a 
ringleader  of  the  base  intrigues  against  Gali- 
leo," declared  that  the  view  of  "this  Ipernic, 
or  whatever  his  name  might  be,"  appeared  to 
be  contrary  to  Holy  Scripture.  Of  him  Galileo 
wrote  to  Prince  Cesi,  "The  good  man  is  so  well 
acquainted  with  the  author  of  these  doctrines 
that  he  calls  him  Ipernic.  You  see  how  and  by 
whom  poor  philosophy  suffers."  The  Arch- 
bishop of  Florence  solemnly  denounced  Gali- 
leo's doctrines  as  unscriptural.  Father  Lecazre 
declared  they  "cast  suspicion  on  the  doctrine 
of  the  incarnation." 

The   struggle    grew   fiercer   and   Professor 
White  says:  "There  were  intrigues  and  coun- 


GALILEO  TO  1616  141 

tar-intrigues,  plots  and  counter-plots,  lying 
and  spying;  and  in  the  thickest  of  this  seeth- 
ing mass  of  priests,  bishops,  archbishops,  and 
cardinals,  appear  two  popes,  Paul  V.  and  Urban 
VIII."  While  Galileo  took  the  course  which 
seemed  most  natural  under  the  circumstances, 
he  really  did  the  most  dangerous  thing  possi- 
ble. He  undertook  to  show  that  the  new 
astronomy  did  not  necessarily  contradict  the 
Scriptures.  This  had  the  unexpected  effect  of 
increasing  the  seriousness  of  his  offence,  as  it 
was  bitterly  received  by  the  priests,  as  an  in- 
vasion of  their  functions  as  the  sole  interpreters 
of  Holy  Writ.  Galileo  made  this  ill-starred 
defence  in  a  long  letter  to  his  friend  and  pupil 
Castelli.  Castelli  had  been  present  at  a  bril- 
liant gathering  at  the  Grand  Duke's  apart- 
ments. Boscaglia,  one  of  Galileo's  enemies,  had 
maliciously  interjected  the  Bible  into  a  discus- 
sion of  Galileo's  theories,  and  Castelli  had  felt 
obliged  to  champion  the  cause  of  his  absent 
friend.  He  reported  to  Galileo  that  he  had  si- 
lenced all  objectors  except  the  dowager  Grand 
Duchess  Christine.  It  was  to  provide  his  col- 
league with  the  arguments  with  which  to  sat- 
isfy even  the  aged  Duchess,  that  Galileo  wrote 
the  now  historic  letter  to  Castelli.  The  Church 
has  been  glad  to  avail  itself  of  the  very  defence 


142     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

which  Galileo  offered  for  it  in  the  17th  century, 
but  they  held  it  as  one  of  his  most  serious 
crimes  at  the  time. 

The  following  passage  will  given  an  idea  of 
the  reasoning  of  the  famous  letter : ' '  Since  two 
truths  can  obviously  never  contradict  each  oth- 
er, it  is  the  part  of  wise  interpreters  of  Holy 
Scripture  to  take  the  pains  to  find  out  the  real 
meaning  of  its  statements,  in  accordance  with 
the  conclusions  regarding  nature  which  are 
quite  certain,  either  from  the  clear  evidence  of 
sense  or  from  necessary  demonstration.  As 
therefore  the  Bible,  although  dictated  by  the 
Holy  Spirit,  admits,  from  the  reasons  given 
above,  in  many  passages  of  an  interpretation 
other  than  the  literal  one;  and  as,  more- 
over, we  cannot  maintain  with  certainty 
that  all  interpreters  are  inspired  by  God, 
I  think  it  would  be  the  part  of  wisdom 
not  to  allow  any  one  to  apply  passages  of 
Scripture  in  such  a  way  as  to  force  them  to 
support,  as  true,  conclusions  concerning  nature 
the  contrary  of  which  may  afterwards  be  re- 
vealed by  the  evidence  of  our  senses  or  by 
necessary  demonstration." 

Castelli  saw  no  harm  in  the  sage  advice  of 
this  letter,  and  spread  it  about  by  means  of 
numerous  copies.  Father  Lorini  obtained  a 


GALILEO  TO  1616  143 

copy  and  presented  it  as  a  part  of  the  evidence, 
when  he  acquired  the  doubtful  honor  of  being 
the  first  to  accuse  Galileo  to  the  inquisition. 
The  inquisiton  required  the  original  letter,  and 
ordered  the  Archbishop  of  Pisa  to  obtain  it  "in 
a  skillful  manner. ' '  When  Castelli  visited  Pisa 
a  few  days  later,  the  Archbishop  suggested 
that  he  thought  he  could  show  where  Galileo 
was  mistaken  if  only  he  could  see  the  original 
letter.  Fortunately  Castelli  had  already  re- 
turned the  original  to  the  author.  When  Cas- 
telli explained  to  Galileo,  and  asked  for  the  let- 
ter again  to  show  to  the  Archbishop  the  au- 
thor's suspicions  were  aroused  and  the  Arch- 
bishop 's  subsequent  intrigues  were  of  no  avail. 
Galileo  then  increased  the  letter  into  a  long 
and  careful  statement  of  his  whole  position,  to 
protect  himself  against  the  many  misrepresen- 
tations of  his  enemies.  These,  he  observed,  were 
rapidly  increasing,  but  he  knew  nothing  of  the 
cause — the  secret  proceedings  of  the  inquisi- 
tion against  him.  It  was  in  the  enlarged  edi- 
tion of  the  letter  that  he  quoted  the  saying  of 
Cardinal  Baronius,  that  in  inspiring  the  Bible  : 
"The  Holy  Spirit  intended  to  teach  us  how  to 
go  to  heaven,  and  not  how  the  heavens  go." 

It  was  now  clear  that  trouble  was  brewing 
in   Rome   and   Galileo   concluded   his   wisest 


144     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

course  would  be  to  meet  it  there.  He  arrived 
in  Rome  to  promote  his  cause,  in  December, 
1615.  He  seems  to  have  been  entirely  success- 
ful so  far  as  his  personal  affairs  were  con- 
cerned ;  his  many  and  powerful  friends  in  Rome 
greatly  aided  him  to  escape  the  snares  laid  for 
him  by  his  enemies.  This  accomplished,  he 
was  determined  to  secure  a  triumph  for  the 
theories  of  Copernicus.  He  was  laboring  under 
the  delusion  that  the  Roman  Curia  was  open  to 
be  convinced  by  scientific  evidence.  He  lec- 
tured at  the  houses  of  prominent  Romans,  en- 
thusiastically expounding  the  Copernican  sys- 
tem, until  the  inquisition  was  aroused  and  de- 
termined to  take  action.  This  was  done  in  the 
historically  important  proceedings  of  February 
25th  and  26th,  1616.  What  was  really  done  at 
this  meeting  of  the  Holy  Office  has  been  the 
subject  of  a  controversy  much  too  long  for  re- 
production here.  The  most  reliable  conclu- 
sions seem  to  be  those  of  Cantor,  Wohlwill, 
Gherardi,  and  especially  of  Karl  von  Gebler, 
who  was  permitted  to  make  a  German  transla- 
tion of  all  the  documents  of  the  trial  now  in 
the  archives  of  the  Vatican.  According  to  these 
authorities,  Galileo  was  ordered  to  abandon  his 
belief  in  the  Copernican  system,  as  that  system 
was  undoubtedly  contradictory  to  the  Holy 


GALILEO  TO  1616  145 

Scriptures.  The  custom  of  the  Church  at  this 
period  shows  that  this  did  not  prohibit  Galileo, 
or  anyone  else,  from  explaining  that  system  as 
a  supposition  or  hypothesis,  so  long  as  it  was 
not  advanced  as  actually  true.  It  is  certain 
that  Galileo  acted  at  the  time,  and  for  the  next 
sixteen  years,  on  the  assumption  that  this  was 
the  extent  of  their  condemnation,  and  it  may  be 
safely  assumed  that  the  inquisition  fully  in- 
formed him  as  to  its  desires.  Realizing  that 
any  other  course  was  hopeless,  he  agreed  to 
cease  teaching  the  Copernican  system  "as 
true." 

Meanwhile  Grand  Duke  Cosmo  II.,  who  was 
anxious  about  the  welfare  of  his  great  philos- 
opher, was  receiving  disquiting  letters  from 
his  Ambassador  Guiccardini,  who  was  urging 
that  it  was  unwise  for  Galileo  to  remain  longer 
in  Rome,  "especially  at  a  time  when  the  ruler 
of  the  eternal  city  hates  science  and  polite 
scholars,  and  cannot  endure  these  innovations 
and  subtleties.''  This  portrait  did  no  injustice 
to  Pope  Paul  V.  On  March  5th  the  Congrega- 
tion of  the  Index  issued  its  decree  placing  the 
writings  of  Copernicus  on  the  Index  of  pro- 
hibited books.  The  Grand  Duke,  alarmed  by 
these  developments,  issued  the  order  for  Ga- 
lileo's return.  Accordingly,  on  May  23rd  the 


146     SCIENCE  AND  SUPEKSTITION 

Secretary  of  State  Picchena,  wrote  Galileo  as 
follows : 

"You  have  had  enough  of  monkish  perse- 
cutions, and  know  now  what  the  flavor  of  them 
is.  His  Highness  fears  that  your  longer  tar- 
riance  at  Rome  might  involve  you  in  difficul- 
ties, and  would  therefore  be  glad  if,  as  you 
have  so  far  come  honorably  out  of  the  affair, 
you  would  not  tease  the  sleeping  dog  any  more, 
and  would  return  here  as  soon  as  possible.  For 
there  are  rumors  flying  about  which  we  do  not 
like,  and  the  monks  are  all  powerful."  Galileo 
complied  at  once  with  the  wishes  of  the  Grand 
Duke  and  on  the  4th  of  June  departed  from 
Rome. 


CHAPTER  IX 

TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE 

THE  SEVEN  years  following  1616  were 
passed  quietly  by  Galileo  in  the  Villa 
Segni,  near  Florence.  The  inquisition 
had  ordered  changes  to  be  made  in  the  pro- 
hibited book  of  Copernicus,  and  Galileo  waited 
for  these  changes  as  indications  of  the  inten- 
tions of  the  Church.  During  this  period  he 
wrote  no  new  books.  He  was  hoping  he  might 
be  allowed  to  freely  express  his  real  convic- 
tions and  was  unwilling  to  express  them  by 
subterfuge  until  that  hope  perished.  His  atti- 
tude of  mind  is  revealed  in  a  letter  to  the 
Archduke  Leopold,  which  he  sent  with  a  copy 
of  his  treatise  on  the  causes  of  the  tides : 

"With  this  I  send  a  treatise  on  the  causes  of 
the  tides,  which  I  wrote  rather  more  than  two 
years  ago  at  the  suggestion  of  his  Eminence 
Cardinal  Orsini  at  Rome,  at  the  time  when  the 
theologians  were  thinking  of  prohibiting  Co- 
pernicus' book  and  the  doctrine  announced 
therein  of  the  motion  of  the  earth,  which  I 
then  held  to  be  true,  until  it  pleased  those  gen- 
tlemen to  prohibit  the  work,  and  to  declare 
that  opinion  to  be  false  and  contrary  to  Scrip- 
ture. Now,  knowing  as  I  do,  that  it  behooves 
147 


148     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

us  to  obey  the  decisions  of  the  authorities,  and 
to  believe  them,  since  they  are  guided  by  a 
higher  insight  than  any  to  which  my  humble 
mind  can  of  itself  attain,  I  consider  this  trea- 
tise which  I  send  you  merely  to  be  a  poetical 
conceit  or  dream,  and  desire  that  your  High- 
ness may  take  it  as  such,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
based  on  a  double  motion  of  the  earth,  and  in- 
deed contains  one  of  the  arguments  which  I 
have  adduced  in  confirmation  of  it." 

In  1616  an  attack  on  Copernicus'  system  had 
been  especially  addressed  to  him  by  the  law- 
yer Ingoli  of  Kavenna.  To  this  Galileo  did 
not  dare  to  reply.  In  1618  it  was  effectively 
answered  in  a  book  by  Kepler,  which  was 
promptly  placed  on  the  Index  of  prohibited 
books.  During  this  period,  Galileo  conducted 
a  controversy  with  Father  Grassi  in  which  he 
greatly  humiliated  the  Jesuit  by  the  supe- 
riority of  his  wit  and  arguments.  Father  Grassi 
finally  condescended  to  a  reply  of  so  scurrilous 
and  contemptible  a  nature  that  it  had  to  be 
published  in  Paris,  as  he  was  afraid  to  publish 
it  in  Rome,  where  Galileo  was  well  known  and 
much  admired.  When  this  discreditable  work 
finally  reached  Rome  it  destroyed  the  influence 
of  Father  Grassi,  who  had  been  considered 
above  such  behavior. 


TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE  149 

Galileo  finally  realized  that  it  would  be  im- 
possible within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Roman 
Curia  to  publish  any  book  which  undisguisedly 
advocated  the  theories  of  Copernicus.   Never- 
theless he  was  bent  upon  the  production  of  a 
great  book  which  would  contain  the  result  of 
his  researches  of  fifty  years.    It  is  clear  that 
he  intended  this  from  the  beginning,  no  matter 
what  subterfuges  might  have  to  be  employed, 
to  secure  permission  for  its  publication.    The 
book   was   to   deliver   a   great   blow   against 
Ptolemy  and  for  Copernicus.    As  a  method  of 
disguise  he  fell  back  upon  the  Greek  device  of 
dialogues.    This  work  is  now  known  as  one  of 
the  few  epochmaking  books  of  the  world  and 
had  for  its  title  "Dialogues  on  the  Two  Princi- 
pal Systems  of  the  World,  the  Ptolemaic  and 
Copernican."    The  subject  matter  of  the  book 
is  communicated  through  the  mouths  of  three 
characters,  Salviati,  Sagredo,  and  Simplicius. 
Salviati  had  been  a  pupil  in  Florence,   and 
Sagredo  a  pupil  at  Padua  and  a  Venetian  sena- 
tor.   Neither  of  these  men  were  then  living. 
Simplicius  was  the  name  of  one  of  the  well 
known  commentators  on  Aristotle  and  for  this 
reason  was  well  fitted  to  his  role  of  defending 
the  Aristotelian  antagonists  of  Copernicus. 


150     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

In  the  dialogues  it  was  the  role  of  Salviati 
to  advocate  the  Copernican  system ;  Simplicius 
was  to  reply  and  to  defend  the  Ptolemaic  sys- 
tem, while  Sagredo  was  to  be  a  third  and  im- 
partial person  anxious  to  learn.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  read  the  book  without  seeing  the  over- 
whelming victory  of  the  Copernican  theory. 
This  victory  was  all  the  greater  because  Galileo 
placed  in  the  mouth  of  Simplicius  a  more  elo- 
quent and  capable  defense  of  his  case  than 
could  have  been  offered  by  any  of  the  protag- 
onists of  that  school.  The  arguments  of  Sal- 
viati are  clear,  forcible,  and  convincing  and  it 
is  obvious  that  they  represent  the  real  convic- 
tions of  Galileo.  Salviati,  however,  always  felt 
himself  in  the  shadow  of  the  inquisition  and 
followed  each  powerful  argument  by  urging 
that  this  was  not  presented  as  an  actual  truth, 
but  as  a  chimera  or  a  paradox. 

The  book  was  finished  at  the  close  of  1629, 
and  then  began  the  long  struggle  to  secure  per- 
mission for  its  publication.  Everything  ap- 
peared favorable  for  this  and  Galileo  appar- 
ently expected  little  difficulty.  He  had  many 
and  influential  friends,  although  he  had  lost 
his  powerful  protector,  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo 
II.,  who  had  been  succeeded  by  Ferdinand  II. 
Eight  years  before  in  1621,  the  year  of  the 


TKIAL  AND  SENTENCE  151 

Grand  Duke's  death,  Pope  Paul  V.  died.  He 
was  succeeded  by  a  feeble  old  man  who  lived 
and  ruled  as  pontiff  for  two  years.  Upon  his 
death  the  papacy  fell  to  Cardinal  Maffeo  Bar- 
berini,  who  ruled  as  Urban  VIII.  This  was  the 
pope  who  ignored  precedents,  declaring  that 
"the  sentence  of  a  living  pope  is  worth  more 
than  the  decrees  of  a  hundred  dead  ones. ' '  He 
refused  to  take  counsel  with  the  Sacred  Col- 
lege, saying  that  he  "knew  better  than  all  the 
cardinals  put  together."  He  revoked  the  res- 
olution of  the  Romans  never  again  to  erect  a 
monument  to  a  pope  during  his  lifetime,  as- 
serting that  "such  a  resolution  could  not  apply 
to  a  Pope  like  himself."  He  made  some  con- 
siderable display  of  an  interest  in  poetry  and 
science  and  had  for  years  shown  the  warmest 
friendship  for  Galileo.  It  was  therefore  ex- 
pected that  the  Pope  would  present  no  ob- 
stacles to  the  new  publication. 

The  chief  censor  of  the  press  was  Father 
Riccardi  at  Rome,  and  the  faithful  Castelli, 
assured  Galileo  that  Riccardi  was  favorable  to 
the  plan.  Castelli  further  informed  him  of 
a  conversation  between  the  Pope  and  Thomas 
Campanella  who  had  been  brought  from  Spain 
to  Rome  by  the  Pope  himself  and  had  told  the 
Pope  at  an  audience  that  he  had  been  trying 


152    SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

to  convert  some  German  nobles  to  the  Catholic 
faith,  and  had  found  them  favorably  disposed, 
but  when  they  heard  of  the  prohibition  of  the 
Copernican  system,  they  became  deaf  to  all 
further  arguments.  To  this  Urban  had  re- 
plied "It  never  was  our  intention ;  and  if  it  had 
depended  upon  us,  that  decree  would  not  have 
been  passed."  It  should  be  noticed,  however, 
that  in  the  struggle  of  1616  the  Pope,  then  a 
cardinal,  did  nothing  for  the  cause  of  Coper- 
nicus. 

Galileo  was  convinced  that  his  best  policy 
was  to  proceed  to  Rome,  and  he  arrived  there 
on  the  third  of  May,  1630,  with  the  manuscript 
of  the  dialogues  ready  for  submission.  Of  a 
long  audience  which  he  had  immediately  with 
the  Pope,  he  writes:  "His  Holiness  has  begun 
to  regard  my  affairs  in  a  way  that  permits  me 
to  hope  for  a  favorable  result."  Riccardi,  the 
chief  censor,  justified  the  hope  raised  by  Cas- 
telli's  report,  but  did  not  fail  to  perceive  after 
looking  through  the  manuscript,  that  Galileo 
had  not  kept  strictly  within  the  limits  of  the 
merely  hypothetical  treatment  of  Copernicus 
prescribed  by  the  inquisition.  He  set  himself, 
therefore,  in  the  dscharge  of  his  official  duty 
and  in  the  interest  of  Galileo,  to  have  these 
parts  altered  to  the  hypothetical  standpoint. 


TEIAL  AND  SENTENCE  153 

This  task  he  intrusted  to  Father  Visconti,  pro- 
fessor of  mathematics,  who  made  what  were 
considered  the  necessary  alterations  and  finally 
approved  the  revised  work.  In  June  Galileo 
persuaded  Riccardi  to  forego  his  wish  to  read 
the  book  again  himself  and  issue  immediately 
the  permission  of  its  printing  in  Rome.  Ric- 
cardi had  imposed  only  one  condition — after 
the  index  and  dedication  were  prepared  it 
should  be  again  submitted  to  him  before  being 
sent  to  the  press. 

It  was  expected  that  the  book  would  be  pub- 
lished in  Rome  in  the  autumn  in  the  name  of 
the  liberal  society,  Accademia  dei  Lincei,  and 
was  to  be  seen  through  the  press  by  its  presi- 
dent, Prince  Cesi,  an  enthusiastic  patron  of  all 
scientific  enterprises.  It  was  a  great  disaster 
for  Galileo  that  Prince  Cesi  was  seized  with  a 
fever  in  August  and  died  after  a  few  days  ill- 
ness. The  society,  which  had  been  held  to- 
gether by  him  immediately  began  to  dissolve. 
Robbed  of  his  most  powerful  protector  Ga- 
lileo's enemies  renewed  their  activities  and  in 
less  than  a  month  after  the  Prince's  death, 
Castelli  urged  Galileo  "for  many  most  weighty 
reasons  which  he  did  not  just  then  wish  to 
commit  to  paper,  to  have  the  work  printed  in 
Florence,  and  as  soon  as  possible."  Castelli  also 


154     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

informed  him  that  Father  Visconti  wished  the 
book  to  see  the  light  and  has  assured  him  that 
there  would  be  no  objection  to  the  printing  at 
Florence.  Galileo  immediately  applied  to  the 
Inquisitor-General  of  the  city,  to  the  Inspector- 
General,  and  to  the  political  authorities  for 
permission,  which  was  granted  without  hesi- 
tation. 

The  only  thing  remaining  was  to  secure  the 
final  permission  of  the  Roman  censor,  Riccardi. 
This  was  promptly  refused  on  the  ground  that 
the  manuscript  had  not  been  submitted  for 
final  revision.  Riccardi  demanded  that  it  be 
sent  to  Rome  to  undergo  this  final  censorship, 
after  which  it  could  be  printed  at  Florence  or 
anywhere  else.  Carrier  service  between  Flor- 
ence and  Rome  had  been  rendered  so  unre- 
liable by  the  plague,  that  Galileo  was  afraid 
to  intrust  his  entire  manuscript  and  finally  per- 
suaded Riccardi  to  be  satisfied  with  the  final 
revison  of  the  preface  and  conclusion,  and  to 
appoint,  for  the  revision  of  the  rest  of  the 
manuscript,  some  representative  in  Florence. 
This  appointment  fell  to  Father  Stephani,  Coun- 
sel to  the  Inquisition  at  Florence.  This  eccle- 
siastic diligently  performed  his  task  and  it  is 
reported  that  he  was  moved  to  tears  at  some 
passages  by  the  humility  and  reverent  obe- 


TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE  155 

dience  to  the  Church  displayed  by  the  author. 
After  making  a  few  changes,  he  declared  that 
the  author  should  be  begged  to  publish  rather 
than  have  obstacles  placed  in  his  way. 

Riccardi  thought  otherwise.  He  had  kept 
the  preface  and  conclusion  for  months,  per- 
sistently failing  to  fulfil  his  promise  to  return 
them.  Galileo,  convinced  that  no  further  dif- 
ficulty could  be  raised,  had  already  begun  the 
printing  at  Florence,  when  Riccardi  suddenly 
raised  the  point  that  in  the  original  agreement 
the  book  was  to  be  published  in  Rome.  With 
this  new  objection,  Galileo  began  to  lose  both 
hope  and  patience.  In  a  letter  to  Cioli,  he  com- 
plained that  Riccardi  is  apparently  determined 
"to  delay  and  spin  out  everything  with  empty 
words,  which  it  is  not  easy  to  put  up  with." 
The  influence  of  the  Grand  Duke  Ferdinand  II. 
was  invoked,  and  Riccardi  was  induced  to  leave 
the  final  examination  of  the  work  to  the  In- 
quisitor at  Florence,  who  would  then  decide 
the  question  of  publication.  Riccardi  wrote  a 
letter  of  instructions  which  should  govern  the 
Inquisitor  in  his  examination  of  the  manu- 
script, the  chief  item  of  which  was  that  the 
truth  of  the  Copernican  system  was  never  to  be 
conceded,  but  always  made  to  appear  as  a  mere 
hypothesis. 


156     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

After  a  further  tiresome  wait  Riccardi  finally 
returned  the  preface  and  conclusion  and  the 
great  book  appeared  in  February  of  1632.  It 
was  enthusiastically  applauded  by  all  inde- 
pendent scholars.  They  properly  appraised  the 
thin  hypothetical  disguise  and  Professor  White 
says  "The  pious  preface  was  laughed  at  from 
one  end  of  Europe  to  the  other."  The  main 
argument  of  this  preface  was  to  the  effect  that 
the  book  itself  would  show  to  the  non-Italian 
world  that  the  condemnation  of  Copernicus  in 
1616  was  not  in  any  way  due  to  Roman  igno- 
rance of  Copernican  ideas.  This  argument  be- 
ing received  by  scholars  throughout  Europe  as 
a  hugh  joke  caused  the  Church  to  suspect  that 
it  had  been  outwitted  by  the  author.  The 
Jesuits  were  especially  bitter  because  it  ap- 
peared to  them  that  Galileo  was  usurping  their 
claim  to  be  the  educators  of  Europe.  A  dili- 
gent search  was  prosecuted  in  every  direction 
for  some  means  of  attacking  the  author. 

The  first  attack  was  made  because  of  three 
dolphins  which  adorned  the  title-page  of  the 
book,  and  were  charged  to  have  some  heretical 
significance.  It  turned  out,  however,  that  this 
was  a  sort  of  trademark  of  the  publisher, 
Landini,  and  appeared  in  all  his  books.  A 
really  formidable  weapon  was  used  when  Ga- 


TKIAL  AND  SENTENCE  157 

lileo's  foes  succeeded  in  persuading  Pope 
Urban  that  he  himself  was  meant  by  Simpli- 
cius  and  that  this  was  one  way  of  calling  him 
a  simpleton.  If  the  Pope  had  been  less  of  an 
egotist,  he  would  probably  have  laughed  at 
this  ridiculous  idea  instead  of  believing  it.  Al- 
though this  personal  motive  of  the  Pope  figured 
in  his  antagonism  to  Galileo,  it  was  overshad- 
owed by  the  feeling  that  the  Dialogues  was  a 
work  that  menaced  the  foundations  of  the 
Church. 

The  first  blow  was  struck  when  the  pub- 
lisher, Landini  at  Florence,  was  forbidden  the 
further  sale  of  the  book.  This  was  followed 
by  a  special  commission  appointed  by  the  Pope 
to  investigate  the  whole  affair.  Landini  was 
then  further  ordered  to  send  all  the  copies  in 
stock  to  Rome,  but  replied  that  all  the  copies 
had  been  delivered  to  the  purchasers.  Galileo 
was  clearly  in  danger.  When  the  Grand  Duke's 
ambassador,  Nicolini,  following  his  instruc- 
tions from  the  Duke,  went  into  the  Vatican  to 
intercede  for  Galileo,  the  Pope  bluntly  told 
him:  "Your  Galileo  has  ventured  to  meddle 
with  things  that  he  ought  not,  and  with  the  most 
important  and  dangerous  subject  that  can  be 
stirred  up  in  these  days." 


158     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

Fruitless  efforts  were  made  by  the  friends 
of  Galileo  to  check  the  general  movement  for 
an  inquisition  trial  for  Galileo  and  it  was 
equally  in  vain  that  the  always  faithful  Cas- 
telli  insisted  "Nothing  can  be  done  now  to 
hinder  the  earth  from  revolving."  The  chief 
difficulty  that  confronted  Galileo's  enemies 
was  that  the  book  had  been  submitted  to  all 
the  proper  authorities  and  had  received  all  the 
necessary  permissions,  so  that  responsibility 
for  its  publication  seemed  to  lie  with  the  au- 
thorities and  the  censors,  and  Riccardi  and  Vis- 
conti  at  Rome  were  dismissed  with  disgrace, 
and  Castelli  was  banished  for  three  years  from 
the  papal  presence. 

The  appointed  commission,  however,  succeed- 
ed, evidently  to  its  own  great  surprise,  in  find- 
ing an  effective  weapon  ready  to  its  hand.  In 
investigating  the  proceedings  of  February  26, 
1616,  it  discovered  an  unsigned  note  which  no 
one  appears  to  have  known  to  have  been  any 
part  of  the  legal  documents  of  that  occasion. 
Von  Gebler  and  many  other  eminent  author- 
ities seem  to  have  the  best  of  the  case  when 
they  argue  that  this  note  had  been  interpolated 
into  the  proceedings  by  Galileo's  opponents  of 
that  period.  Galileo,  himself,  strenuously  in- 
sisted and  evidently  quite  sincerely  that  he  had 


TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE  159 

never  been  informed  of  the  existence  of  such  an 
order,  and  it  is  reasonably  evident  that  the  or- 
der was  not  adopted  or  communicated  to  him. 
The  commission,  however,  insisted  that  both 
these  contentions  were  wrong,  that  the  inqui- 
sition of  1616  had  adopted  and  communicated 
to  Galileo  the  order,  which  reads  as  follows : 

"To  relinquish  altogether  the  said  opinion 
that  the  sun  is  the  center  of  the  world  and  im- 
movable, and  that  the  earth  moves ;  nor  hence- 
forth to  hold,  teach,  or  defend  it  in  any  way 
whatsoever,  verbally  or  in  writing,  otherwise 
proceedings  would  be  taken  against  him  by  the 
Holy  Office,  which  injunction  the  said  Galileo 
acquiesced  in  and  promised  to  obey." 

This  order,  were  it  genuine,  would  mean  that 
Galileo  was  not  allowed  to  present  Copernican 
ideas  even  as  suppositions.  It  is  flatly  in  con- 
flict with  the  letter  given  to  Galileo  at  the  time 
by  Cardinal  Bellarmine  and  is  contradicted  by 
the  fact  that  Galileo  always  assumed  himself 
to  be  at  perfect  liberty  to  adopt  the  hypo- 
thetical method  and  certainly  the  censor  could 
have  known  nothing  of  this  remarkable  note. 
Whoever  managed  to  interpolate  it  into  the 
proceedings  of  1616  worked  against  Galileo 
more  effectively  than  they  could  have  dreamed, 


160     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

for  it  was  the  grand  cause  of  or  at  least  the 
excuse  for  Galileo's  undoing  in  1633. 

Galileo  was  ordered  to  appear  in  Rome  by 
a  papal  mandate  of  November  11.    On  the  eigh- 
teenth of  December  the  Father  Inquisitor  at 
Florence,  reported  to  Rome  that  Galileo  was 
seriously  ill  in  bed  and  sent  with  the  informa- 
tion a  signed  statement  of  three  reliable  phy- 
sicians  that  the   least   aggravation,   such  as 
would  be  caused  by  traveling,  might  be  dan- 
gerous to  life.    At  this  time  Galileo  was  within 
a  few  months  of  seventy  years.    The  Roman 
reply  to  this  came  two  days  later  and  was  a 
threat  that  if  Galileo  did  not  immediately  ap- 
pear the  Holy  Congregation  would  send  its  own 
physician  upon  whose  consent  he  would  be 
brought  to  Rome  in  irons.    It  was  added  that 
the   papal   commissioner   and   the   physician 
would  travel  at  Galileo's  expense.    The  help- 
lessness of  the  Italian  rulers  before  the  power 
of  the  hierarchy  is  seen  in  the  utter  inability 
of  the  Grand  Duke  to  protect  his  philosopher 
from  these  extreme  measures.    Therefore,  on 
the  twentieth  of  January,  1633,  with  the  plague 
everywhere  raging,  the  feeble  old  man  was  car- 
ried in  a  litter  to  Rome. 

The  long  and  dreary  trial,  reaching  into  the 
summer,  found  the  aged  astronomer  so  com- 


TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE  161 

pletely  exhausted  that  he  begged  his  judges  to 
have  pity  on  his  physical  condition.  Pity, 
however,  had  little  place  in  their  scheme  of 
things.  At  this  time  Galileo  was  a  prisoner, 
but  it  will  probably  never  be  possible  definitely 
to  decide  whether  he  was  kept  in  some  apart- 
ment of  the  Vatican  or  consigned  to  the  dun- 
geons of  the  inquisition.  Von  Gebler  cautiously 
says  that  "it  may  perhaps  be  concluded  that 
he  was  never  thrown  into  the  dungeons  of  the 
inquisition."  The  charge  that  he  was  submit- 
ted to  torture  must  be  dismissed,  unless  we 
take  our  definition  of  torture  from  Julius 
Clarius:  "Know  then  there  are  five  degrees  of 
torture;  first,  the  threat  of  the  rack;  second, 
being  taken  into  the  torture  chamber;  third, 
being  undressed  and  bound ;  fourth,  being  laid 
upon  the  rack;  fifth,  turning  the  rack."  In 
the  sense  of  this  definition  it  might  be  argued 
that  Galileo  was  submitted  to  torture  in  the 
first  degree.  What  really  happened  was  that 
he  was  threatened  with  torture,  and  had  he 
failed  to  comply  with  all  the  demands  of  his 
judges,  would  have  been  actually  tortured.  On 
Wednesday,  June  22,  1633,  in  the  large  hall 
of  the  Dominican  Convent  of  St.  Maria  sopra  la 
Minerva,  in  the  presence  of  his  judges  and  a 
large  gathering  of  cardinals  and  prelates  of 


162     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

the  Holy  Congregation,  Galileo  had  read  to  him 
the  following  sentence,  which  will  be  an  im- 
portant historical  document  to  the  end  of  time : 

"We,  Gasparo  del  titolo  di  S.  Croce  in  Gieru- 
salemme  Borgia ; 

Fra  Felice  Centino  del  titolo  di  S.  Anastasia, 
detto  d  'Ascoli ; 

Guido  del  titolo  di  S.  Maria  del  Popolo  Benti- 
vogilo ; 

Fra  Desiderio  Scaglia  del  titolo  di  S.  Carlo 
detto  di  Cremona; 

Fra  Antonio  Barberino  detto  di  S.  Onofrio ; 

Laudivio  Zacchia  del  titolo  di  S.  Pietro  in 
Vincola  detto  di  S.  Sisto ; 

Berlingero  del  titolo  di  S.  Agostino,  Gessi ; 

Fabricio  del  titolo  di  S.  Lorenzo  in  pane  e 
perna,  Verospi,  chiamato  Prete ; 

Francesco  di  S.  Lorenzo  in  Damaso  Barber- 
ino, e; 

Martio  di  S.  Maria  Nuova  Ginetti  Diaconi ; 

by  the  grace  of  God,  cardinals  of  the  Holy 
Roman  Church,  Inquisitors  General,  by  the 
Holy  Apostolic  see  specially  deputed,  against 
heretical  depravity  throughout  the  whole 
Christian  Republic. 

"Whereas  you,  Galileo,  son  of  the  late  Vin- 
cenzo  Galileo,  Florentine,  aged  seventy  years, 


TEIAL  AND  SENTENCE  163 

were  in  the  year  1615  denounced  to  this  Holy 
Office  for  holding  as  true  the  false  doctrine 
taught  by  many,  that  the  sun  is  the  centre  of 
the  world  and  immovable,  and  that  the  earth 
moves,  and  also  with  a  diurnal  motion ;  for  hav- 
ing disciples  to  whom  you  taught  the  same 
doctrine ;  for  holding  correspondence  with  cer- 
tain mathematicians  of  Germany  concerning 
the  same  for  having  printed  certain  letters,  en- 
titled 'On  the  Solar  Spots,'  wherein  you  de- 
veloped the  same  doctrine  as  true ;  and  for  re- 
plying to  the  objections  from  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures, which  from  time  to  time  were  urged 
against  it,  by  glossing  the  said  Scriptures  ac- 
cording to  your  own  meaning:  and  whereas 
there  was  thereupon  produced  the  copy  of  a 
document  in  the  form  of  a  letter,  purporting  to 
be  written  by  you  to  one  formerly  your  disci- 
ple, and  in  this  divers  propositions  are  set 
forth,  following  the  hypothesis  of  Copernicus, 
which  are  contrary  to  the  true  sense  and  au- 
thority of  Holy  Scripture : 

"This  Holy  Tribunal  being  therefore  desir- 
ous of  proceeding  against  the  disorder  and 
mischief  thence  resulting,  which  went  on  in- 
creasing to  the  prejudice  of  the  Holy  Faith,  by 
command  of  his  Holiness  and  of  the  most  emi- 
nent Lord  Cardinals  of  this  supreme  and  uni- 


164     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

versal  inquisition,  the  two  propositions  of  the 
stability  of  the  sun  and  the  motion  of  the  earth 
were  by  the  theological  'Qualifiers'  qualified  as 
follows : 

"The  proposition  that  the  sun  is  the  centre 
of  the  world  and  does  not  move  from  its  place 
is  absurd  and  false  philosophically  and  for- 
mally heretical,  because  it  is  expressly  con- 
trary to  the  Holy  Scripture. 

"The  proposition  that  the  earth  is  not  the 
centre  of  the  world  and  immovable,  but  that 
it  moves,  and  also  with  a  diurnal  motion,  is 
equally  absurd  and  false  philosophically,  and 
theologically  considered,  at  least  erroneous  in 
faith. 

"But  whereas  it  was  desired  at  that  time  to 
deal  leniently  with  you,  it  was  decreed  at  the 
Holy  Congregation  held  before  his  Holiness  on 
the  twenty-fifth  of  February,  1616,  that  his 
Eminence  the  Lord  Cardinal  Bellarmine 
should  order  you  to  abandon  altogether  the 
said  false  doctrine,  and,  in  the  event  of  your 
refusal,  that  an  injunction  should  be  imposed 
upon  you  by  the  Commissary  of  the  Holy  Of- 
fice, to  give  up  the  said  doctrine,  and  not  to 
teach  it  to  others,  nor  to  defend  it,  nor  even  dis- 
cuss it;  and  failing  your  acquiescense  in  this 
injunction,  that  you  should  be  imprisoned.  And 


TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE  165 

in  execution  of  this  decree,  on  the  following 
day,  at  the  Palace,  and  in  the  presence  of  his 
Eminence,  the  said  Lord  Cardinal  Bellarmine, 
after  being  gently  admonished  by  the  said  Lord 
Cardinal,  the  command  was  intimated  to  you 
by  the  Father  Commissary  of  the  Holy  Office 
for  the  time  before  a  notary  and  witnesses, 
that  you  were  altogether  to  abandon  the  said 
false  opinion,  and  not  in  future  to  defend  or 
teach  it  in  any  way  whatsoever,  neither  ver- 
bally nor  in  writing ;  and  upon  your  promising 
to  obey  you  were  dismissed. 

"And  in  order  that  a  doctrine  so  pernicious 
might  be  wholly  rooted  out  and  not  insinuate 
itself  further  to  the  grave  prejudice  of  Cath- 
olic truth,  a  decree  was  issued  by  the  Holy 
Congregation  of  the  Index,  prohibiting  the 
books  which  treat  of  this  doctrine,  and  declar- 
ing the  doctrine  itself  to  be  false  and  wholly 
contrary  to  sacred  and  Divine  Scripture. 

"And  whereas  a  book  appeared  here  recent- 
ly, printed  last  year  at  Florence,  the  title  of 
which  shows  that  you  were  the  author,  this 
title  being:  'Dialogue  of  Galileo  Galilei  on  the 
Two  Principal  Systems  of  the  World,  the 
Ptolemanic  and  the  Copernican';  and  whereas 
the  Holy  Congregation  was  afterwards  in- 
formed that  through  the  publication  of  the 


166     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

said  book,  the  false  opinion  of  the  motion  of 
the  earth  and  the  stability  of  the  sun  was  daily 
gaining  ground;  the  said  book  was  taken  into 
careful  consideration,  and  in  it  there  was  dis- 
covered a  patent  violation  of  the  aforesaid  in- 
junction that  had  been  imposed  upon  you,  for 
in  this  book  you  have  defended  the  said  opin- 
ion previously  condemned  and  to  your  face  de- 
clared to  be  so,  although  in  the  said  book  you 
strive  by  various  devices  to  produce  the  im- 
pression that  you  leave  it  undecided,  and  in 
express  terms  as  probable;  which,  however,  is 
a  most  grievous  error,  as  an  opinion  can  in  no 
wise  be  probable  which  has  been  declared  and 
defined  to  be  contrary  to  Divine  Scripture: 

"Therefore  by  our  order  you  were  cited  be- 
fore this  Holy  Office,  where,  being  examined 
upon  your  oath,  you  acknowledged  the  book 
to  be  written  and  published  by  you.  You  con- 
fessed that  you  began  to  write  the  said  book 
about  ten  or  twelve  years  ago,  after  the  com- 
mand had  been  imposed  upon  you  as  above; 
that  you  requested  license  to  print  it  without, 
however,  intimating  to  those  who  granted  you 
this  license  that  you  had  been  commanded  not 
to  hold,  defend,  or  teach  in  any  way  whatever 
the  doctrine  in  question. 


TEIAL  AND  SENTENCE  167 

"You  likewise  confessed  that  the  writing  of 
the  said  book  is  in  various  places  drawn  up  in 
such  a  form  that  the  readers  might  fancy  that 
the  arguments  brought  forward  on  the  false 
side  are  rather  calculated  by  their  cogency  to 
compel  conviction  than  to  be  easy  of  refuta- 
tion; excusing  yourself  for  having  fallen  into 
an  error,  as  you  alleged,  so  foreign  to  your  in- 
tention, by  the  fact  that  you  had  written  in 
dialogue,  and  by  the  natural  complacency  that 
every  man  feels  in  regard  to  his  own  subtleties, 
and  in  showing  himself  more  clever  than  the 
generality  of  men,  in  devising,  even  on  behalf 
of  false  propositions,  ingenious  and  plausible 
arguments. 

"And  a  suitable  term  having  been  assigned 
to  you  to  prepare  your  defense,  you  produced 
a  certificate  in  the  handwriting  of  his  Eminence 
the  Lord  Cardinal  Bellarmine,  procured  by 
you,  as  you  asserted,  in  order  to  defend  your- 
self against  the  calumnies  of  your  enemies, 
who  gave  out  that  you  had  abjured  and  had 
been  punished  by  the  Holy  Office;  in  which 
certificate  it  is  declared  that  you  had  not  ab- 
jured and  had  not  been  punished,  but  merely 
that  the  declaration  made  by  his  Holiness  and 
published  by  the  Holy  Congregation  of  the 
Index,  had  been  announced  to  you,  wherein  it 


168     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

is  declared  that  the  doctrine  of  the  motion  of 
the  earth  and  the  stability  of  the  sun  is  con- 
trary to  the  Holy  Scriptures,  and  therefore  can- 
not be  defended  or  held.  And  as  in  this  certifi- 
cate there  is  no  mention  of  the  two  articles  of 
the  injunction,  namely,  the  order  not  'to  teach' 
and  'in  any  way,'  you  represented  that  we 
ought  to  believe  that  in  the  course  of  fourteen 
or  sixteen  years  you  had  lost  all  memory  of 
them ;  and  that  this  was  why  you  said  nothing 
of  the  injunction  when  you  requested  permis- 
sion to  print  your  book.     And  all  this  you 
urged  not  by  way  of  excuse  for  your  error,  but 
that  it  might  be  set  down  to  a  vainglorious  am- 
bition rather  than  to  malice.    But  this  certifi- 
cate produced  by  you  in  your  defense  has  only 
aggravated  your  delinquency,  since  although  it 
is  there  stated  that  the  said  opinion  is  contrary 
to  Holy  Scripture,  you  have  nevertheless  dared 
to  discuss  and  defend  it  and  to  argue  its  prob- 
ability ;  nor  does  the  license  artfully  and  cun- 
ningly extorted  by  you  avail  you  anything, 
since  you  did  not  notify  the  command  imposed 
upon  you. 

"And  whereas  it  appeared  to  us  that  you 
had  not  stated  the  full  truth  with  regard  to 
your  intention,  we  thought  it  necessary  to  sub- 
ject you  to  a  rigorous  examination,  at  which 


TRIAL  AND  SENTENCE  169 

(without  prejudice,  however,  to  the  matters 
confessed  by  you,  and  set  forth  as  above,  with 
regard  to  your  said  intention)  you  answered 
like  a  good  Catholic.  Therefore,  having  seen 
and  maturely  considered  the  merits  of  this, 
your  cause,  together  with  your  confessions  and 
excuses  above  mentioned,  and  all  that  ought 
justly  to  be  seen  and  considered,  we  have  ar- 
rived at  the  underwritten  final  sentence  against 
you: 

"Invoking,  therefore,  the  most  holy  name  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  of  His  most  glo- 
rious Mother,  and  ever  Virgin  Mary,  by  this 
our  final  sentence,  which  sitting  in  judgment, 
with  the  counsel  and  advice  of  the  Reverend 
Masters  of  sacred  theology  and  Doctors  of  both 
Laws,  our  assessors,  we  deliver  in  these  writ- 
ings, in  the  cause  and  causes  presently  before 
us  between  the  magnificent  Carlo  Sinceri,  Doc- 
tor of  both  Laws,  Proctor  Fiscal  of  this  Holy 
Office,  of  the  one  part,  and  you  Galileo  Galilei, 
the  defendant,  here  present,  tried  and  con- 
fessed as  above,  of  the  other  part — we  say, 
pronounce,  sentence,  declare,  that  you,  the  said 
Galileo,  by  reason  of  the  matters  adduced  in 
process,  and  by  you  confessed  as  above,  have 
rendered  yourself  in  the  judgment  of  this  Holy 
Office  vehemently  suspected  of  heresy,  namely, 


170     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

of  having  believed  and  held  the  doctrine — 
which  is  false  and  contrary  to  the  sacred  and 
divine  Scriptures — that  the  sun  is  the  centre  of 
the  world  and  does  not  move  from  east  to 
west,  and  that  the  earth  moves  and  is  not  the 
centre  of  the  world ;  and  that  an  opinion  may  be 
held  and  defended  as  probable  after  it  has  been 
declared  and  denned  to  be  contrary  to  Holy 
Scripture ;  and  that  consequently  you  have  in- 
curred all  the  censures  and  penalties  imposed 
and  promulgated  in  the  sacred  canons  and 
other  constitutions,  general  and  particular, 
against  such  delinquents.  From  which  we  are 
content  that  you  be  absolved,  provided  that 
first,  with  a  sincere  heart,  and  unfeigned  faith, 
you  abjure,  curse,  and  detest  the  aforesaid  er- 
rors and  heresies,  and  every  other  error  and 
heresy  contrary  to  the  Catholic  and  Apostolic 
Roman  Church  in  the  form  to  be  prescribed  by 
us. 

"And  in  order  that  this  your  grave  and  per- 
nicious error  and  transgression  may  not  remain 
altogether  unpunished,  and  that  you  may  be 
more  cautious  for  the  future,  and  an  example 
to  others,  that  they  may  abstain  from  similar 
delinquencies — we  ordain  that  the  book  of  the 
'Dialogues  of  Galileo  Galilei'  be  prohibited  by 
public  edict. 


TKIAL  AND  SENTENCE  171 

"We  condemn  you  to  the  formal  prison  of 
this  Holy  Office  during  our  pleasure,  and  by 
way  of  salutory  penance,  we  enjoin  that  for 
three  years  to  come  you  repeat  once  a  week 
the  seven  penitential  psalms. 

"Reserving  to  ourselves  full  liberty  to  mod- 
erate, commute,  or  take  off,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
the  aforesaid  penalities  and  penance. 

"And  so  we  say,  pronounce,  sentence,  de- 
clare, ordain,  condemn  and  reserve,  in  this  and 
any  other  better  way  and  form  which  we  can 
and  may  lawfully  employ. 

"So  we,  the  undersigned  cardinals  pro- 
nounce. 

"F.  Cardinalis  de  Asculo, 
G.  Cardinalis  Bentiuolus, 
Fr.  Cardinalis  de  Cremona, 
Fr.  Antonius  Cardinalis  S.  Honuphrij, 
B.  Cardinalis  Gypsius, 
Fr.  Cardinalis  Verospius, 
M.  Cardinalis  Ginettus." 


CHAPTER  X 

RECANTATION  AND  AFTER 

IT  WILL  be  observed  that  three  of  the 
names  preceding  the  sentence  are  missing 
from  the  signatures  at  its  close.  The  opin- 
ion of  scholars  who  have  devoted  themselves 
to  the  remarkable  career  of  the  Floren- 
tine astronomer  is  divided  as  to  whether  or  not 
this  signified  their  disagreement  with  its  impo- 
sition. However  that  may  be,  the  document 
will  stand  forever  as  the  irrefutable  evidence 
of  one  of  the  darkest  blots  on  the  annals  of 
mankind.  Immediately  after  the  sentence  was 
pronounced,  the  great  astronomer,  now  thor- 
oughly cowed  and  broken,  was  compelled  to 
kneel  humbly  before  the  whole  assembly  and 
make  the  following  degrading  recantation: 

"I,  Galileo  Galilei,  son  of  the  late  Vincenzo 
Galilei,  Florentine,  aged  seventy  years,  ar- 
raigned personally  before  this  tribunal,  and 
kneeling  before  you,  most  Eminent  and  Rev- 
erend Lord  Cardinals,  inquisitors  general 
against  heretical  depravity  throughout  the 
whole  Christian  Republic,  having  before  my 
eyes  and  touching  with  my  hands,  the  Holy 
Gospels — swear  that  I  have  always  believed, 
172 


KECANTATION  AND  AFTER        173 

do  now  believe,  and  by  God's  help  will  for  the" 
future  believe,  all  that  is  held,  preached,  and 
taught  by  the  Holy  Catholic  and  Apostolic 
Roman  Church.  But  whereas — after  an  injunc- 
tion had  been  judicially  intimated  to  me  by  this 
Holy  Office,  to  the  effect  that  I  must  altogether 
abandon  the  false  opinion  that  the  sun  is  the 
centre  of  the  world  and  immovable,  and  that 
the  earth  is  not  the  centre  of  the  world,  and 
moves,  and  that  I  must  not  hold,  defend,  or 
teach  in  any  way  whatsoever,  verbally  or  in 
writing,  the  said  doctrine,  and  after  it  had 
been  notified  to  me  that  the  said  doctrine  was 
contrary  to  Holy  Scripture — I  wrote  and 
printed  a  book  in  which  I  discuss  this  doctrine 
already  condemned,  and  adduce  arguments  of 
great  cogency  in  its  favor,  without  presenting 
any  solution  of  these ;  and  for  this  cause  I  have 
been  pronounced  by  the  Holy  Office  to  be 
vehemently  suspected  of  heresy,  that  is  to  say, 
of  having  held  and  believed  that  the  sun  is  the 
centre  of  the  world  and  immovable,  and  that 
the  earth  is  not  the  centre  and  moves: 

"Therefore,  desiring  to  remove  from  the 
minds  of  your  Eminences,  and  of  all  faithful 
Christians,  this  strong  suspicion  reasonably 
conceived  against  me,  with  sincere  heart  and 
unfeigned  faith  I  abjure,  curse  and  detest  the 


174     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

aforesaid  errors  and  heresies,  and  generally 
every  other  error  and  sect  whatsoever  contrary 
to  the  said  Holy  Church;  and  I  swear  that  in 
future  I  will  never  again  say  or  assert,  verbally 
or  in  writing,  any  thing  that  might  furnish  oc- 
casion for  a  similar  suspicion  regarding  me ;  but 
that  should  I  know  any  heretic,  or  person  sus- 
pected of  heresy,  I  will  denounce  him  to  this 
Holy  Office,  or  to  the  inquisitor  and  ordinary 
of  the  place  where  I  may  be.  Further,  I  swear 
and  promise  to  fulfill  and  observe  in  their  in- 
tegrity all  penances  that  have  been,  or  that 
shall  be,  imposed  upon  me  by  this  Holy  Office. 
And,  in  the  event  of  my  contravening  (which 
God  forbid!)  any  of  these  my  promises,  pro- 
testations, and  oaths,  I  submit  myself  to  all  the 
pains  and  penalities  imposed  and  promulgated 
in  the  sacred  canons  and  other  constitutions, 
general  and  particular,  against  such  delin- 
quents. So  help  me  God,  and  these  His  Holy 
Gospels,  which  I  touch  with  my  hands. 

"I,  Galileo  Galilei,  have  adjured,  sworn, 
promised  and  bound  myself  as  above;  and  in 
witness  of  the  truth  thereof  I  have  with  my 
own  hand  subscribed  the  present  document  of 
my  abjuration,  and  recited  it  word  for  word  at 
Rome,  in  the  Convent  of  Minerva,  this  twenty- 
second  day  of  June,  1633. 


RECANTATION  AND  AFTER        175 

"I,  Galileo  Galilei,  have  abjured  as  above 
with  my  own  hand." 

It  may  be  held  that  Galileo  would  be  a  still 
greater  hero  had  he  displayed  the  martyr  cour- 
age of  Bruno.  It  must  be  considered,  how- 
ever, that  his  torture  and  death  were  in  no  way 
necessary  to  the  ultimate  triumph  of  science, 
and  that  it  was  in  the  following  years  of  im- 
prisonment that  he  was  able  to  give  to  the 
world  vast  researches  in  another  monumental 
scientific  book,  "The  Dialogues  of  the  Two 
New  Sciences." 

Now  that  Galileo  was  effectually  silenced,  a 
host  of  priestly  writers  arose  and  undertook 
to  show  the  world  the  absurdity  of  the  new  as- 
tronomy. Two  of  the  most  famous  of  these 
will  serve  as  examples  of  the  rest.  Scipio 
Chiaramonti  produced  the  following  luminous 
arguments : 

"Animals,  which  move,  have  limbs  and  mus- 
cles; the  earth  has  no  limbs  or  muscles,  there- 
fore it  does  not  move.  It  is  angels  who  make 
Saturn,  Jupiter,  the  sun,  etc.,  turn  around.  If 
the  earth  revolves,  it  must  also  have  an  angel 
in  the  centre  to  set  it  in  motion ;  but  only  devils 
live  there;  it  would  therefore  be  a  devil  who 
would  impart  motion  to  the  earth. 


176     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

"The  planets,  the  sun,  the  fixed  stars,  all 
belong  to  one  species — namely,  that  of  stars.  It 
seems,  therefore,  to  be  a  grievious  wrong  to 
place  the  earth,  which  is  a  sink  of  impurity, 
among  these  heavenly  bodies,  which  are  pure 
and  divine  things." 

Chiaramonti  was  ably  seconded  by  Polacco, 
who  produced  a  book  entitled  Anticopernicus 
Catholicus,  which  contained  the  following 
gems: 

"If  we  concede  the  motion  of  the  earth,  why 
is  it  that  an  arrow  shot  into  the  air  falls  back 
to  the  same  spot,  while  the  earth  and  all  the 
things  on  it  have  in  the  meantime  moved  very 
rapidly  toward  the  east?  Who  does  not  see 
that  great  confusion  would  result  from  this 
motion  ? 

"The  Copernican  theory  of  the  earth's  mo- 
tion is  against  the  nature  of  the  earth  itself, 
because  the  earth  is  not  only  cold  but  contains 
in  itself  the  principle  of  cold;  but  cold  is  op- 
posed to  motion  and  even  destroys  it — as  is 
evident  in  animals,  which  become  motionless 
when  they  become  cold. 

"Since  it  can  certainly  be  gathered  from 
Scripture  that  the  heavens  move  above  the 
earth,  and  since  a  circular  motion  requires 
something  immovable  around  which  to  move, 


RECANTATION  AND  AFTER       177 

.  .  .  .  the  earth  is  at  the  centre  of  the 
universe." 

To  the  above  collection  of  forensic  jewels 
might  be  added  an  argument  of  the  great  theo- 
logian Fromundus,  of  the  Cathedral  of  Ant- 
werp, in  his  book  "Ant-Aristarchus,"  produced 
before  the  trial.  Fromundus  argues  that  if  the 
earth  be  revolving,  as  says  Copernicus,  "build- 
ings on  the  earth  itself  would  fly  off  with  such 
a  rapid  motion  that  men  would  have  to  be  pro- 
vided with  claws  like  cats  to  enable  them  to 
hold  fast  to  the  earth's  surface." 

While  Galileo  was  unable  to  reply,  other 
champions  spoke.  Conspicuous  among  these 
was  Campanella,  who  wrote  his  "Apology  for 
Galileo,"  for  which,  along  with  other  heresies, 
he  seven  times  underwent  torture.  As  yet  the 
Church  had  not  the  slightest  inkling  that  it  had 
committed  the  most  colossal  blunder  of  all  his- 
tory and  continued  its  harshness  against  the 
overwhelmed  philosopher.  During  Galileo's 
lifetime  the  truths  he  had  established  were 
carefully  weeded  from  all  Catholic  colleges  and 
universities  in  Europe.  When,  in  a  scientific 
book  which  appeared,  he  happened  to  be  re- 
ferred to  as  renowned,  the  inquisition  ordered 
the  substitution  of  the  word  notorious.  All  ef- 
forts made  by  the  friends  of  the  astronomer  for 


178     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

the  suspension  of  the  sentence  of  imprisonment 
were  useless,  and  he  spent  the  last  years  of  his 
life  a  prisoner  in  his  own  villa  at  Arcetri.  He 
was  allowed  to  receive  one  visit  from  the  Grand 
Duke,  but  pleaded  in  vain  for  the  extension  of 
the  same  privilege  to  his  many  friends,  until 
he  was  too  blind  to  see  them  and  too  deaf  to 
hear  their  voices.  Says  Gebler,  "It  was  not 
until  the  old  man  was  quite  blind  and  hope- 
lessly ill,  with  one  foot  in  the  grave,  that  any 
human  feeling  was  awakened  for  him  at  the 
Vatican."  One  of  his  last  wishes,  to  be  buried 
in  the  vault  of  his  ancestors,  was  denied,  and 
although  money  was  contributed  by  his  ad- 
mirers for  a  handsome  monument,  no  monu- 
ment of  any  kind  was  permitted.  Even  the  fu- 
neral sermon  had  to  pass  the  censorship  of  the 
inquisition  to  see  that  there  were  no  reflections 
on  the  behavior  of  that  organization. 

The  works  of  Galileo  and  Copernicus  re- 
mained on  the  Index  of  prohibited  books,  and 
in  1765  the  celebrated  French  astronomer,  La- 
lande,  tried  in  vain  to  have  the  ban  removed. 
They  were  still  on  the  Index  published  in  1819, 
but  in  1820,  a  crisis  developed  as  the  result  of 
the  writing  of  a  book  by  Canon  Settele,  Cath- 
olic professor  of  astronomy  at  Rome,  in  which 
the  Copernican  system  was  taken  for  granted, 


RECANTATION  AND  AFTER       179 

as  was  the  custom  by  this  time  throughout  the 
world.  The  Master  of  the  Sacred  Palace,  An- 
fossi,  holder  of  the  position  held  in  Galileo's 
time  by  Riccardi,  refused  permission  to  print 
the  book  unless  it  was  changed  to  treat  the  the- 
ories of  Copernicus  as  mere  hypotheses.  The 
Canon  refused  to  make  himself  the  laughing 
stock  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  cardi- 
nals were  afraid  to  declare  themselves  as  be- 
lieving in  a  stationary  earth,  and  so  on  the 
eleventh  of  September,  1822,  the  Church  de- 
creed that,  "the  printing  and  publication  of 
works  treating  of  the  motion  of  the  earth  and 
the  stability  of  the  sun,  in  accordance  with  the 
general  opinion  of  modern  astronomers,  is  per- 
mitted at  Rome."  The  Church  had  at  last  ar- 
rived at  the  position  reached  by  Galileo  more 
than  two  hundred  years  before. 

Thirteen  more  years  elapsed,  hovewer,  before 
the  Church  had  the  courage  to  acknowledge  its 
error,  and  issue  in  1835  in  an  edition  of  the  In- 
dex which  did  not  condemn  works  dealing 
with  the  double  motion  of  the  earth.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  dignify  with  a  reply  the  shameful 
and  unscrupulous  arguments  which  appear  in 
Catholic  periodicals  that  Galileo  was  not  per- 
secuted for  his  scientific  opinions,  but  because 
of  his  impertinence  to  the  Church,  etc.  The 


180     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

only  reply  necessary  to  the  folly  of  such  irre- 
sponsible writers  is  to  be  found  in  the  recent 
works  of  prominent  Catholic  scholars,  a  fair 
example  of  whom  is  Professor  Walsh  of  Ford- 
ham  University,  who  in  his  book,  "The  Popes 
and  Science,"  which  bears  the  imprimatur  of 
Archbishop  Farley,  says:  "There  is  no  doubt 
that  Galileo  was  persecuted  by  the  inquisition 
on  account  of  his  astronomical  teachings.  We 
would  be  the  last  to  deny  that  this  was  a 
deplorable  mistake  made  by  persons  in  ecclesi- 
astical authority,  who  endeavored  to  make  a 
Church  tribunal  the  judge  of  scientific  truth, 
a  function  altogether  alien  to  its  character 
which  it  was  not  competent  to  exercise." 

This  position  taken  by  Professor  Walsh  is 
paralleled  by  the  modern  historical  scholars  of 
the  Church,  and  the  reader  may  form  his  own 
opinion  of  the  article  which  appeared  in  the 
February,  1915,  issue  of  the  Catholic  magazine 
"Truth,"  which  says,  "The  accusation  that 
Galileo  was  persecuted  on  account  of  his  scien- 
tific views,  is  now  admitted  by  every  writer  as 
untrue  and  unjust." 

The  actual  documents  of  the  Galileo  trial  re- 
mained hidden  from  the  world  in  the  archives 
of  the  Vatican  until  Napoleon  took  possession 
of  the  papal  city  and,  in  1811,  ordered  the 


RECANTATION  AND  AFTER       181 

removal  of  the  archives  to  Paris.    The  French 
State  Librarian,  Barbier,  recognized  the  im- 
mense importance  of  the  records  of  the  trial, 
and  with  the  approval  of  the  Emperor  ordered 
a  French  translation.    This  would  undoubtedly 
have  been  accomplished  had  not  Napoleon  been 
banished  to  Elba.    It  is  interesting  to  read  of 
the  many  and  strenuous  efforts  made  by  the 
Vatican  to  recover  these  documents.  They  were 
still  in  Paris  when  Louis  XVIII  sat  on  the 
throne  of  France.    The  papal  representative, 
Marini,  seeking  to  recover  them  at  this  date, 
was  informed  that  the  King  was  anxious  to 
read  them  and  had  them  in  his  cabinet.     Two 
years  later,  in  1817,  the  influence  of  the  power- 
ful Richelieu  was   invoked   in   vain.    Eleven 
years  after  this  the  effort  was  still  fruitless 
and  when  Count  Daru  wished  to  use  the  docu- 
ments in  his  work  on  astronomy,  he  was  in- 
formed that  they  could  not  be  found. 

It  is  now  agreed  that  they  had  been  delib- 
erately hidden  and  they  remained  in  conceal- 
ment seventeen  years  longer.  The  plea  of  the 
French  government  to  the  papacy  that  the 
documents  were  not  returned  because  they  had 
been  lost  was  made  to  prevent  an  open  breach 
on  the  subject.  A  representative  of  the  Pope 
was  sent  from  one  library  to  another  with  per- 


182     SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

mission  to  search  and  the  sure  knowledge  that 
he  would  not  find.  Louis  Phillipe  finally  prom- 
ised to  return  them  to  Rome  if  they  could  be 
found  on  the  express  condition  that  Rome 
would  publish  them  complete.  This  condition 
being  agreed  to  they  were  mysteriously  found, 
and  Pope  Pius  IX.  was  able  to  restore  them  to 
the  prefect  of  the  Sacred  Archives,  Marino 
Marini. 

Then  came  a  discreditable  effort  to  escape 
the  promise  given  to  the  French  ruler.  Marini 
made  a  publication  entitled  "Galileo  and  the 
Inquisition,"  supposed  to  meet  the  French  con- 
dition. Von  Gebler  says  it  was  really  a  collec- 
tion of  "disjointed  extracts,  arbitrary  frag- 
ments, and  in  many  instances  nothing."  The 
Galilean  biographer,  Alberi,  and  ten  years 
later,  Professor  Cantor  asked  in  vain  to  be 
allowed  to  consult  the  documents  for  work 
they  had  in  hand.  It  was  in  1877,  nearly  thirty 
years  after  their  recovery  from  Paris,  that  Karl 
von  Gebler  was  permitted  free  access  to  the 
documents  in  the  Vatican  and  brought  out  a 
German  translation  at  Stuttgart.  About  the 
same  time,  Epinois,  who  had  been  working  for 
some  time  on  the  project,  brought  out  another 
complete  edition,  and  now  the  world  possesses 
the  actual  facts  of  the  greatest  trial  in  his- 


RECANTATION  AND  AFTER       183 

tory,  and  knows  what  it  may  expect  if  ever 
again  priests  and  prelates  are  permitted  to 
become  masters  of  society  and  dictators  of  the 
human  mind. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  FUTURE 

THE  chief  value  of  the  study  of  history  is, 
that  a  knowledge  of  the  past  helps  us  to 
understand  the  present  and,  in  a  meas- 
ure, to  anticipate  the  future.  There  is  consider- 
able divergence  of  opinion  as  to  the  destinies  of 
science  and  religion.  There  are  many  super- 
ficial thinkers  who  believe  that  the  warfare  be- 
longs almost  exclusively  to  the  past.  They  are 
of  the  opinion  that  the  differences  between  the 
historic  antagonists  are  incidental,  and  acci- 
dental, but  not  fundamental.  These  accidental 
distinctions  being  removed,  harmonious  rela- 
tions are  expected  to  prevail. 

These  complacent  apostles  of  reconciliation 
have  utterly  failed  to  grasp  the  nature  and 
foundation  of  the  antagonism.  The  Christian 
Church,  Protestant  and  Catholic,  holds  and 
must  hold  that  it  is  the  guardian  of  certain  un- 
changeable truths,  committed  to  it  by  the 
creator  of  the  universe.  These  revealed  truths 
are  sacred  and  the  idea  of  an  investigation  of 
their  verity  with  the  possible  result  of  rejec- 
tion is  intolerable. 

The  attitude  of  science  is  and  must  be  the  ex- 
act opposite.  Science  does  not  and  never  can 

184 


THE  FUTURE  185 

consent  to  the  placing  of  any  so-called  truth 
beyond  the  reach  of  re-examination,  and  the 
very  law  of  its  being  is  that  weight  of  evidence 
is  the  sole  justification  for  positiveness  of 
affirmation. 

The  science  of  astronomy  has  rendered  mag- 
nificent service  to  the  cause  of  progress  by 
completely  overthrowing  what  were  alleged 
for  centuries  to  be  revealed  truths  about  the 
universe.  The  Church  has  always  maintained 
that  its  sacred  colleges,  and  especially  its 
popes,  had  the  advantage  of  divine  co-operation 
and  enlightenment.  The  history  of  astronomy 
has  completely  destroyed  this  claim.  It  is  no 
longer  possible  for  an  intelligent  man  to  be- 
lieve that  an  organization  which  for  two  hun- 
dred and  nineteen  years  forbade  the  reading 
of  books  teaching  the  rotation  of  the  earth  on 
its  axis  and  its  revolution  about  the  sun  could 
have  had,  during  that  entire  period,  access  to 
divine  sources  of  knowledge.  During  that  pe- 
riod, the  double  motion  of  the  earth,  now 
known  to  every  schoolboy,  was  denounced  in 
eleven  bulls  solemnly  issued  by  eleven  different 
infallible  popes. 

Great  as  have  been  the  services  of  astronomy 
in  shaking  the  foundations  of  ecclesiastical  au- 
thority, they  are  likely  to  be  eclipsed  when  the 


186      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

real  implications  of  the  theory  of  evolution  are 
thoroughly  established  in  the  general  mind. 
Unfortunately  for  religion,  science  has  not  been 
satisfied  with  the  investigation  of  stars,  rocks, 
animals,  and  other  visible  and  material 
phenomena.  It  has  gradually  assumed  the 
right  to  turn  its  gaze  in  any  direction,  and  has 
not  hesitated  to  direct  its  searchlight  upon,  and 
apply  its  methods  to,  the  phenomena  of  re- 
ligion. 

One  of  its  most  striking  and  reliable  discov- 
eries is  that  every  religion  represents  the  in- 
tellectual condition  of  a  certain  people  of  a  cer- 
tain period.  What  the  modern  religionist  seeks 
to  accomplish  is  to  fasten  upon  the  human 
mind  forever  the  conclusions  reached  by  the 
men  of  a  certain  age.  When  this  is  understood, 
as  it  will  be  when  the  evolutionary  theory  is 
generally  assimilated,  the  death  knell  of  the- 
ology will  have  sounded. 

To  seek  to  impose  upon  the  modern  mind  the 
petrified  blunders  of  primitive  men,  is  as  hope- 
less a  task  as  would  be  the  administration  of  a 
great  modern  city  by  the  regulations  which 
prevailed  two  thousand  years  ago  in  a  Syrian 
village.  The  theological  concept  and  the  evolu- 
tionary concept  are  irreconcilable  enemies,  and 


THE  FUTURE  187 

either  can  only  live  in  peace  by  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  other. 

In  a  fair  field  with  no  favor  there  would  not 
be  the  slightest  doubt  as  to  the  outcome  of  the 
struggle.  Indeed  in  such  a  field,  it  would  have 
terminated  long  ago.  Religion  has  been  and  is 
protected,  because  it  has  proved  the  most  ef- 
fective of  all  instruments  for  the  perpetuation 
of  the  subjection  of  the  so-called  lower  classes. 
As  George  Burman  Foster,  Professor  of  Re- 
ligion in  the  University  of  Chicago,  has  well 
said,  "Rulers  have  ever  availed  themselves  of 
religion  as  a  mighty  agency  in  keeping  under 
their  unruly  subjects — an  agency  more  effect- 
ive than  brute  force,  since  it  aroused  a  less  vio- 
lent reaction."  In  the  same  paragraph  the 
Professor  quotes  a  German  who  said,  "How  are 
the  people  to  be  saved  from  the  Social  Demo- 
crats if  they  stop  going  to  church?" 

It  has  become  the  custom  of  religious  con- 
ventions to  bewail  the  irreligion  of  the  pro- 
letariat, which  is  largely  due  to  the  clear  per- 
ception of  thousands  of  the  most  intelligent  of 
the  working  class  that  the  ecclesiastical  forces 
have  always  been  mustered  against  them. 
There  is  a  marked  disposition  on  the  part  of 
an  increasing  number  of  working  men  and 
working  women  to  revolt  against  all  oppres- 


188      SCIENCE  AND  SUPERSTITION 

sors,  be  they  royal,  or  priestly,  or  economic. 
Kings  have  always  been  tenacious  when  their 
revenues  were  threatened;  priests  have  hesi- 
tated at  nothing  when  their  tithes  were  in 
jeopardy,  and  the  bourgeoisie  presents  an  un- 
broken front  when  its  profits  are  in  danger,  but 
all  these  forms  of  income  represent  the  robbery 
of  labor  and  are  responsible  for  its  tragic 
poverty. 

Unless  all  signs  fail,  we  or  our  immediate 
successors  shall  behold  a  generation  of  working 
men  and  working  women  who  will  scorn  to  be 
oppressed  and  refuse  to  be  longer  cajoled  by 
enemies  who  pretend  to  be  friends.  Their  atti- 
tude toward  their  social  oppressors  has  been 
anticipated  by  Swinburne: 

"We  have  done  with  the  kisses  that  sting, 
With  the  thief's  mouth  red  from  the  feast, 

With  the  blood  on  the  hands  of  the  king, 
And  the  lie  on  the  lips  of  the  priest." 


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